The term ‘book trade’ is applied here to the wholesale and retail trading organisations which distribute books from the publisher to their point of sale. The relationship between publishers and the book trade in the Soviet Union is an even more intimate one than that which exists in the West. Not only is the Soviet book trade the only channel through which the publisher can make his sales, and an important means of communicating public reaction to each title, but it is a subsector, along with publishing, of one centrally planned and administered industrial and distributive operation. This chapter considers the structure and economic position of the Soviet book trade; the transactions between publishing-houses and book trade organisations in matters of planning, contracts and the transmission of orders; and the features of certain types of trade outlet (the consumer cooperative network, the second-hand trade and the export trade) to which publishing policy has given special attention.

The structure of the book trade

Throughout the Soviet period, trade in books has never been under the jurisdiction of the state's general trade administration (the present Ministry of Trade and its predecessors), but has always been the responsibility of cultural, educational or more specialised state organs. The State Committee for Publishing, Printing and the Book Trade plans and supervises the book trade through the same hierarchy as that which administers publishing and printing.