Studio « Red Square » launches its own publishing house
The media group “Red Square” launches its publishing house, it will focus on the release of books on television, public city spaces, as well as literature for children and adolescents. The company assures that this will allow both to diversify the business and continue to develop your own ecosystem. However, market participants suggest that books will additionally monetize released content due to the development of a franchise format.
The first channel partner, the Red Square Studio launches its own publishing house, the company representative told Kommersant. The media group plans to take 5% in the market of thematic print media, the company already has its own design studio. The company’s books are distributed through bookstores (Read City Gorod, Moscow, Signature Publications), as well as marketplaces (Ozon, Wildberries and Yandex Market), was convinced by Kommersant. In the latter case, the seller is the Eksmo Publishing House.
Now the Red Square under the publishing house is developing three areas – these are books about television, children’s and teenage literature, as well as professional publications in the field of urban spaces. We are talking about parks, museums, the creation of exhibitions, thematic parks and attractions, said in the media group: “All on the basis of projects that were implemented by the“ Red Square ”.” While the company is working with internal authors, from next year it plans to go out on external, its representative says. In parallel, the concept of the industry radio project-“read-radio” is underway, and as part of the project “Reading Space” (Book Club), Red Square is already working with Moscow State University, the Tretyakov Gallery, the GESS-2, Moskino, Bombbor Publishing House, etc.
LLC Krasny Square is engaged in the production of projects for federal television channels (Channel One, Russia 1, TNT, STS, etc.), and the development of its own animation studio, multimedia performances, musicals, ice and circus shows. The revenue of the LLC for 2023 amounted to 4.7 billion rubles. With net profit, 56.4 million rubles. A year earlier, the revenue of the Red Square was at the level of 3.3 billion rubles. With a pure loss of 362.6 million rubles. 100% LLC belongs to Arkady Rotenberg.
The media group assures that the launch of its own publishing house is due to the diversification of the business: “The company creates a creative ecosystem that includes all communication channels with the audience.” Kommersant’s interlocutors on the media market believe that the Red Square, like other companies, will develop the franchise format. According to the 360 model (involves the operation of one content at different sites), MTS Media is already working.
The Red Square has a similar children’s and teenage project “Captains of the Future”, according to which a series of books, an animated series, an interactive exhibition, as well as songs and clips were released. “The plans for creating an original attraction for thematic parks,” said the representative of the Red Square.
The volume of the book market over the past year, according to Eksmo—AST, reached 98 billion rubles, increasing by 7% year by the year. Of these, 25.3 billion rubles. He brought the segment of children’s literature, the volume of which decreased by 4% year by the year.
Participants in the book market recall that the Red Square already has experience with a printed direction. In 2016, the subsidiary of the company-Media-Dom LLC Red Square-began to issue the magazine “Control Procurement” (see “Kommersant” of June 21, 2016). But now the situation has changed, they say. For example, when working with separate book segments, a special preparation of the book, its marketing and distribution is required, says Pavel Podskosov, CEO of Alpina Non-Fikshn: “More point advertising campaigns are used, not only traditional channels work, but, for example, specialized exhibitions and communities. The circulations of such literature are low – these are hundreds, not thousands of copies. At the same time, the profitability of these books is low, that is, in order to earn a publisher on them, the price should be high. ”
At the same time, the “Red Square” in the segment of books about TV will have to compete with “Eksmo–AST”, which has a fairly wide range of literature on this topic, says independent book expert Vladimir Kharitonov: “If we are talking about books on architecture, then there is, of course, but there are strong publishers there.” The Eksmo-AST refused to comment.
