However, in the age of the internet, online videos, and computer games, the industry is facing significant challenges.
In one of the larger tents, Miklós Nagy, editor-in-chief of Helikon Publishing, will be busy networking between authors, readers and fellow sector professionals.
“Of course, it’s a good opportunity to meet colleagues from other publishing houses and discuss the state of the book market, politics and the like,” he tells the Budapest Business Journal in an interview.
Organized discussion groups are interspersed within the general hubbub, and, according to Nagy, the occasion helps focus the minds of media folk in attendance.
“We time the publication of some of our books, mostly by Hungarian authors, for the Book Week, and cultural journalists usually pay more, or at least some, attention to these newly published works,” he says.
Such attention is important. Helikon, a prestigious, historical brand in the domestic market, is today under the umbrella of the large, relatively well-endowed Libri publishing and retail chain. Despite these advantages, publishing is a struggle. Helikon’s team of eight employees produces approximately 125 new and reprint titles annually, but most print runs total just 2,000 copies, and even then, only half of these may be sold.
All this leaves very little room for profit or breaking even on most volumes.
“When I talk to editors, publishers from big countries, like the United States, Germany and so on, they can hardly believe that we can survive with such print runs. I have seen so many strange faces, publishers looking at me and asking, ‘Are you kidding?’” he admits.
The looks are even more askance when it comes to republishing a successful foreign author in the local vernacular.
“They offer me a proposal to publish a really big star writer, and I say, ‘Look, I know that he’s huge in your country, but believe me, we wouldn’t be able to sell more than 500 copies.’ They look at me and say: ‘What are you talking about?’ They are used to huge print runs of at least 10,000,” Nagy says, highlighting the massive differences in scale.
Determined to maintain the Helikon brand as a publisher of high-quality authors, Nagy typically eschews opportunities to publish popular but low-brow romantic and fantasy titles.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean he ignores broader audiences, covering, for example, a series on the big fashion houses like Prada and Channel, along with a good number of up-market historical fiction, which is “not really big literature,” he admits.
However, every publisher needs some bestsellers. One such for Helikon is the well-known British criminal pathologist Dr. Richard Shepherd, whose two translations are “extremely popular,” Nagy says.
Equally important are the “stars” of his authors’ stable, chief of which is Tibor Bödőcs, a popular stand-up comedian. “He’s a really good quality writer. Serious. We sell more than 50,000 copies of his fiction and satirical books,” says Nagy
Valuable one-hit wonders of late include the autobiography of Nobel Prize winner Katalin Karikó (35,000 copies) and, last year, the autobiography of the late Russian lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny. This is heading for 15,000 sales.
These blockbusters, at least by Helikon standards, are the exception, though, and Nagy instead has to take satisfaction from favorite authors like the “unbiased historian” Ignác Romsics and “one of the best prose writers in Hungary” András Cserna-Szabó, both of whom sell some 4,000 copies per title.
Naturally, the Helikon boss will be introducing some of his authors for signings at the Book Week.
“I will be there with them, chatting away when there are no readers coming (it might happen, unfortunately), and just enjoying the sight when we have a long queue,” he smiles, adding, “The week is important in a way, although I cannot say that’s true financially: It yields hardly any more money than the costs involved.”
While at Helikon, a typical print run might be 2,000, for Barabás Kiss, such a number would be “a brave thing to do.”
Kiss, owner and founder of Ampersand Publishing, says his own book runs normally amount to half this number. He is one of dozens of micro-publishers in Hungary who are in the business, in essence, for love.
“I always wanted to work in the book business from childhood. When I saw a book in London, in a second-hand bookshop, I was daydreaming, thinking wouldn’t it be nice to publish it in Hungarian?” he recalls in an interview with the BBJ.
Moving from journalism to typography, then a text editor, he later began a part-time stint with another book publisher.
“When you have one leg inside a publishing house, for me, it was natural to give some suggestions. ‘Hey, this is a good book; don’t you want to publish this?’ But they didn’t. They always said: ‘Oh we don’t have the funds; it cannot fit inside the portfolio.’ So, I decided: ‘Ok, if you won’t do it, I will,’” he continues.
His first book was a translation of German writer Victor Klemperer’s “LTI” (originally “Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen”). Klemperer, a communist from a Jewish background, lived through and documented the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich. “LTI” is his analysis of how the Nazi government misused and manipulated the German language.
“They banned and changed the meaning of words, started to use more of this, less of that,” says Kiss.
“LTI” was originally published in Hungarian in 1984, though with a print run of just 500 copies. Kiss read it and started to feel “like it was very contemporary.”
“Such a coincidence it was published in 1984 because the whole Nazi language was very Orwellian,” he says.
Ampersand published three editions of “LTI,” 2,500 copies in total, and has sold 1,800.
“It’s not been a big hit,” Kiss notes, but there again, it was never going to enter the teenager bestseller list. “It’s not a romance or about vampires and werewolves,” he adds wryly.
Ampersand, which now turns out 10 books per year, has had more success with follow-ups, including Nikola Tesla’s “My Inventions” and Leonora Carrington’s “The Hearing Trumpet.” Still, Kiss is unlikely to be buying his first BMW from book sales, given that tax and the large distributors make up some 55% of the retail price of books.
Living under such constraints, Kiss earns his keep as a freelance graphic designer, typographer and editor.
Costs mean he cannot justify his own stall at the Book Week, but a better-endowed publisher will share its space at times, enabling him to introduce some of his authors for book-signing sessions.
“I don’t live from this, so I don’t need big profits, and if you don’t need profits, you are more free to do what you want,” he says with a smile. “I publish what I want to see on my bookshelf, and I hope there are more people who want to see the same on theirs.”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 30, 2025.
Producing journalism that is worthy of the name is a costly business. For over 30 years, the publishers, editors and reporters of the Budapest Business Journal have striven to bring you business news that works, information that you can trust, that is factual, accurate and presented without fear or favor.Newspaper organizations across the globe have struggled to find a business model that allows them to continue to excel, without compromising their ability to perform. Most recently, some have experimented with the idea of involving their most important stakeholders, their readers.
We would like to offer that same opportunity to our readers. We would like to invite you to help us deliver the quality business journalism you require. Hit our Support the BBJ button and you can choose the how much and how often you send us your contributions.
