International Statistics of City Libraries, 1976

Abstract

In the planned economy model, publishers brought out the titles for which they had been given permission in a pre-determined number of copies. Vendors were obliged to take over the publishing output and attempted to sell it. If they did not succeed, or had a loss, the state compensated them. The transformation of the Hungarian publishing industry and booktrade to a market economy model means a change-over to exclusively commercial relations, in which all the players in the market need to have their own capital or be credit-worthy. The increase in turnover, characteristic for the 1980’s, stopped in 1988, the reason being the decrease in the real income of the population. The number of periodicals published was also reduced. The proportion of political periodicals has tripled, with a decline in those of a scholarly nature. In book publishing the number of new titles has somewhat increased in the 90s, with print runs showing a downward trend.