The number of new author’s publications grew due to the introduction of neural networks
In the first quarter, the number of new works of Samizdat increased by 33–69%. The authors began to publish modern love and fantasy-faces more often, the segment itself is growing by reducing the volume of books, as well as the introduction of artificial intelligence in the voicing of samizdat. As a result, according to the results of the year, the audiobook market can reach 8 billion rubles, from which samizdat will take half.
The number of books issued by Samizdat in the first quarter has grown significantly, the market participants surveyed by Kommersant told. Thus, the authors of Liters (group of companies; develops the Litreres: Samizdat service, the co-owner of the largest Eksmo—AST publishing group Oleg Novikov) published 21 thousand electronic and 11 thousand audiobooks, their total increased by 69% a year by the year. “Glovyt” (51% belongs to Oleg Novikov) notes an increase in the volume of content by 60% for the period, a year earlier, the indicator was at the level of 35%, without revealing absolute indicators.
The representative of the Litmarket specified that 15.7 thousand publications were published in the first quarter through Author.tode, 18.8 thousand – with the help of their platform, 7 thousand – at the “linen”. The assignment of new products per day on the site ranges from 100 to 120 new works, and every month this indicator is growing, said Nikita Averin, Development Director of Litmarket. For the Ridero publishing service, the number of publications loaded into the system in the first quarter increased by 33.2% in relation to the same period last year.
Samizdat-e-books, printed or digital publications (available on online services), as well as audiobooks published by authors without partnerships with publishers. In Soviet times, unofficial or not censorship of the publication were considered samizdat.
According to the results of 2024, the capacity of the Samizdat market amounted to 7.2 billion rubles, which was 36% higher than the indicators a year earlier, estimated at Liters. At the same time, in the second quarter of 2024, Samizdat first occupied half of the electronic books market in Russia (see Kommersant on August 29, 2024). In the last year, Litres took a share of 50%, “plunging” – 11%, Author.tode – 7%, Litmarket – 4%, the rest of the players – 8%.
Most often, the authors publish books on psychology, self -improvement and esotericism, as well as modern prose, note in Ridero: “Esotericism in early 2025 began to lose its position in the number of items and in sales.” But the segment of modern prose, on the contrary, grows, like detectives, books about growing up, as well as applied training literature, the representative of the service lists.
The “Litnet” talks about the growth of the popularity of the trend for “hijacking” (a literary technique, when the main character falls into the past, future or other universe): “Such works are of increased interest among the portal users and become more and more frequent among requests in the search engine.” Litres at the most popular in the first quarter of 2025 Modern love novels (in the categories « Work and relations in adulthood »), Fiction (« Popadans » in the USSR), Fantasy (« Asia », « dragons »), as well as Detectives.
The number of new works is growing in parallel, and the “mini” format contributes to an increase in sales, Mr. Averin clarifies: “As a result, the volume of books is becoming less, the authors write books faster, readers buy more often.”
Also, for the period, the number of authors has grown, they say in the “turning” without specifying the indicators. The recognition of the Samizdat platforms is also increasing, they certify in the company: “Readers understand that there you can find books that meet their diverse interests.”
In general, modern digital samizdat develops at the expense of audiobooks, Nikita Averin believes. They also agree with this in Liters: “The potential of the growth of audio in Samizdat is huge, while its share inside the audiobook is only 12%.” According to the Litmarket, the audiobook market this year will grow to 8 billion rubles, half of them will compose the sales of audio samizdat. Mr. Averin explains this by the introduction of neural networks when creating audio versions of books: “Editions from AI are much cheaper, they are created quickly and are already not much inferior in quality to books read by professional resolves.”
