Issue 5. Transmedial Practices in Post-Communist Spaces
Henrike Schmidt
Henrike Schmidt studied Slavic Literatures, History and Economics in Bonn, Köln and St. Petersburg. Her PhD thesis (2000) was dedicated to intermedial conceptions of poetic language in Russian poetry of the 20th century. Schmidt is Private Lecturer at the Peter Szondi-Institute for Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include theoretical issues of digital and networked culture and their significance for the societies of East and Central Europe, Russian and Bulgarian literature (with a special focus on intermediality and genre theory). Among her recent publications is the monograph Russian Literature on the Internet. Between digital folklore and political propaganda (in German). Bielefeld, Transcript 2011.
5.4 LitRes. A Critical Review of Russia’s e-Book Seller No1
While in the US the electronic book sector has been prospering since the introduction of comfortable reading devices such as Amazons Kindle or Apples iPad, the Russian market for e-books is still evolving. This review portraits one of the main players in the field, the company LitRes, self-proclaimed ‘aggregator, distributor and seller of licensed electronic books No1 in Russia’. In its programmatic efforts to develop and propagate a Russian market for legal electronic content, primarily e-books, LitRes has to position itself between popular folk libraries, the notorious `pirate’ services and emerging new business models of microsponsoring.
Language of contribution: German