Russian Literature – new E-book Source and Online Reading
Russian Literature – new E-book Source and Online Reading
For 2015 Year of Literature in Russia a lot of initiatives are taking place in the main cities of the country. The interest in Russian literature has already attracted many foreign companies to this market, and what could be better news for those who read in Russian?
On February 13 Amazon launched a new Russian e-book section. Russian was of the eight languages with the largest amount of books on the website, but there was no technical support. For many years e-book in Russian appeared on Amazon without a concrete and well organized section where people can easily find them. The Amazon catalogue is designed for a general audience; you can find mainly classic literature and academic publications. This is just the beginning stage so the catalogue is not so big as the one of litres.ru and Bookmate.com e-library but it will soon increase and be filtered. The company is looking for an expansion into the Russian book market and has already started to sign contract with Russian publishing houses in order to increase its Russian catalogue.
Foreigners who study in Russia and Russians living abroad are the main consumers. As for those who have no Kindle they can easily read the e-book in the Kindle program available on any device. Amazon didn’t promote the new section, because it’s not completely ready yet. The interface it’s still in English and the prices in dollars, but there is now another source of e-book in Russian.
Google company has shown to be very active too. It has recently launched an online “live” version of Лев Толсто́й (Lev Tolstoy)’s masterpiece Анна Каренина (Anna Karenina). The company created a website with the audio, video and text materials from the online reading marathon that took place in October 2014. The initiative was organized by Google and Музей-усадьба Л.Н. Толстого “Ясная Поляна” (Musei-uscadba L. N. Tolstogo “Yasnaya Polyana”). The marathon was held all over the world from the Большой театр (Bolshoi Theater) in Moscow to Pushkin House in Seoul. More than 700 people, including Russian celebrities, read from the book for a total reading of 30 hours and attracted one of the biggest audience ever. Now it’s possible to enjoy the reading on the website, and thanks to its easy navigation you can choose your favourite scene or read it from the very beginning.
This post was brought to you by Jessica, currently studying Russian at Liden & Denz
Photo Credit: Creative Commons
