The Russian publishing group "Eksmo-AST" will release the memoirs of the British Prince Harry "Spare" ("Spare") in the form of a retelling. As the publishers told Kommersant, the book in summary format will be released in three thousand copies, as well as in electronic form.
“The summary will reflect the key ideas of the book without using excerpts from it: the author of the summary read the book in English and retold it in her own language,” Eksmo CEO Yevgeny Kapyev told Kommersant.
Thus, Russian publishers intend to solve the problem with the lack of a license. Penguin Random House, which owns the rights to the Prince's memoirs, pulled out of the Russian market last year. In the future, "Eksmo" plans to release the book "Ne Noah" by Jen Sinsero according to the same scheme, the license for which expired last year and has not been renewed.
Maria Kopachevskaya, editor-in-chief of Smart Reading, told Kommersant that this company has been releasing books in retellings for 10 years. “The share in our catalog of summaries for books not published in Russian is growing due to the current situation, as we try to focus on what is not available to Russian-speaking readers, but is valuable to them,” she explained.
This format is also supported in the LitRes e-book store, seeing it as an additional plus in the form of saving the reader's time. “Readers have less and less time to read or listen to this or that non-fiction in its entirety,” said Evgeny Selivanov, director of the content development department.