What do Armenians read? Artak Aleksanyan’s interview for the Республика Армения (Republic of Armenia) newspaper

Our lives, demands and priorities have drastically changed since the start of the pandemic. Almost all the sectors of public life were transformed. The journalist points out an important question - how did the pandemic affect the activity of Newmag publishing house? Artak Aleksanyan claims that Newmag overcame all the challenges imposed by the coronavirus pandemic with dignity. The website of the publishing house was relaunched very quickly with a new format. This initiative gave the readers an opportunity to purchase books in Armenia and Artsakh with free delivery. 

It was exactly the time period when Newmag published Michelle Obama’s book. 1000 copies of the book were sold out within weeks. Up to 40 copies of the book were sold daily. Michel Obama’s memoir will be republished soon. However, besides the pandemic, 2020 was also extremely tough because of the Nagorno Karabakh war. 

“Starting from October, when the war started, we stopped publishing books. SImply because we were not physically and mentally ready to do that. The war "froze" everything. Not our work, but us ... During the lockdown, we didn’t receive any support from the government, but we survived as best as we could. We are a small business, however, having social responsibility, we have fulfilled all our obligations - translators, proofreaders, editors, designers, all of our partners have been paid on time. That's why it was a year of financial losses.”

When asked by the journalist why the publishing house mainly presents non-fiction books, Artak Aleksanyan notes that the reason is Newmag itself. The creative team mainly consists of journalists. In addition, nowadays non-fiction is a global trend. Whereas a few years ago the books of that genre were in the shadows, they were not presented in the Armenian book market.

“Publishing non-fiction is not an easy task. We must first choose a work that will interest our audience, acquire copyright, translate, decide on the date of publication, organize the marketing campaign, make an attractive design so that people want to buy the book. Not to mention the publishing culture. Footnotes, which must be translated thoroughly and in simple, understandable language. In short, non-fiction has many formulas for success, thus, we have rarely published such literature in Armenia. Roughly speaking, no one had the time or the nerves to do that huge amount of work.”

Newmag never publishes books that are not interesting for the team itself. The vital component of any job is the love for the work and the pleasure for the process. However, Artak Aleksanyan notes that the sphere requires a lot of nerves and effort, especially now, when the sphere has turned upside down.  

“What kind of literature should we translate into Armenian? What books should be published in order to inspire or motivate the society? After all, a book is, first of all, content. You need to publish books that will be useful for that specific period of time.”

According to Artak Aleksanyan, literature is a dialogue of civilizations. We don't really know, for example, what kind of Iranian or Russian literature is published nowadays. For that purpose, Newmag joined the effort with "Oracle'' publishing house last year. As a result, the Armenian-Russian "Oracle" series was created. In the scope of it two books have already been published - Narine Abgaryan’s “Three apples fell from the sky” and Guzel Yakhina’s “Zuleikha”. By the end of the year, only this series will publish about 9 books.  

“We publish books of different languages. We consider it necessary to tell Armenian readers about the modern world, to show the real problems and challenges, world trends.”

The journalist asks what is the most demanded book of the publishing house? In response Artak Aleksanyan claims that Mark Manson’s “The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck” is the absolute favorite of the Armenian readers.