Reading is popular in Armenia, says publishing house chief

The Antares Publishing House’s Facebook initiative offering free books to the Armenian young readers has attracted an increasing number of subscribers.

Summing up the results of the online function, Antares Director Armen Martirosyan said Monday that 847 Armenian users of the social networking had joined their initiative, of whom 23 received books as a present thanks to their ‘likes’.

“Our initiative would not be so popular if not the Facebook pages. The users demonstrated a great activeness with their ‘likes’, and those who started joining but didn’t manage to win were awarded discounts,” he told reporters.

Martirosyan said the project, despite the damage caused, was useful in terms of helping so many people to communicate with books. “This function proved that many would like reading a book, but because books are expensive, we still have work to do to make them accessible. Books have to be in the library first, and besides, it is necessary to launch online books,” he said, noting that an electronic book attracts a reader to obtaining its print copy.

The most desired book, according to Martirosyan, was a recent Armenian translation by George Orwell, which used to be on the list of forbidden literature. Hovhannes Tumanyan’s fairytale collection came in second.

Hovhannisyan had earlier said, in comments to Tert.am, that readers in Armenia prefer to obtain books for free rather than at a
50% discounted price.

Commenting on a similar initiative by the publishing house Zangak, the Antares director said that they had offered cheaper and more accessible books. “We do not aspire to be the biggest publishing house; we seek to publish quality books,” he said.

More than 1,000 users joined Zangak’s initiative on February 19, the International Book Giving Day.