Ukrainian publishing houses: which are the best-known among Ukrainians?

The Ranok publishing house from Kharkiv is the best-known Ukrainian publishing house: 10.4% of Ukrainian readers know it. This is one of the findings of a study carried out across the whole of Ukraine and titled “Ukrainian Reading Publishing Data 2018”. The study was published by the Chytomo cultural and publishing project in conjunction with the GUTENBERGZ digital publishing house and in co-operation with the Razumkov Centre sociological service.

Ivan Malkovich’s A-ba-ba-ha-la-ma-ha publishing house ranks second: 7.2% of Ukrainians know it.

In third place is the Klub Simeinoho Dozvolu publishing house, with 6.2% of the respondents saying that they are familiar with it. Fourth and fifth are Vydavnytstvo Staryi Lev (3.9%) and Folio (3.3%), respectively.

The top three haven’t changed much over the last four years: in a 2014 study the rating of publishers was headed by A-ba-ba-ha-la-ma-ha, followed by Ranok and Klub Simeinoho Dozvolu. However, in that survey Ukrainians were asked about the level of trust in publishers, and not about brand awareness.

Top ten of the best known Ukrainian publishing houses also includes Osnova (2.2%), Navchalna knuha – Bohdan (1.8%), Veselka (1.4%), Osvita (1.4%), Svichado (1.2%).

Less than one percent of Ukrainians are familiar with any other publishing house.

The question was open-ended (ready-made answers were not offered to the respondents) and 37.6% of the respondents did not name any publishers or did not answer the question or chose the response “I find it difficult to answer.”

Some parallels may be seen between the most popular publishers and the most popular genres of books. Respondents said that during the last 12 months most often they bought literature for children and adolescents (11.5%), textbooks and study guides (9.4%), as well as modern detective stories (8.7%).

The full text of the survey is available here.

The study was conducted with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.

The study was conducted by the Razumkov Centre sociological service between 26 October and 1 November 2018 in all regions of Ukraine except the Crimea peninsula and the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 2,013 respondents aged 15–59 years old were interviewed. The theoretical sampling error is 2.3%.