Digital Books Workshop

About me

Publishing

In 1990, after graduating from the Philosophy Department of Ural University, I became editor of the fine art and literary magazine “Labyrinth/ExCenter”, where I learned the basics of editing texts and typesetting books. In 1997, after defending my post-graduate dissertation in philosophy, and in parallel with teaching philosophy and cultural history, my friends and I began publishing academic books with the support of the Open Society Foundation at the Ural University Press. Among the published books were Russian translations of works by Jacques LeGoff, Emmanuel Leroi Ladurie, Paul de Man, Jacques Baudrillard, Theodore Zeldine, Hayden White, etc. In the early 2000s, I worked as a rights manager and editor at the publishing houses U-Faktoria, Ultra.Kultura, and AST.

Journalism

In addition to working in publishing, I wrote articles for various newspapers and magazines on technology and freedom of information (including Komputerra, Novaya Gazeta, Gorky, University Book etc.), and also worked for several years as head of the science and technology department at the online magazine Chastny Korrespondent.

Public Activity

Close familiarity with IT and mass media issues and key projects in this area on the Russian internet my collegues and me led to the creation of the Webpublisher Association in 2010, which worked in Russia in the same direction as the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the US. And I was the director of the organization until 2022.

EPUB production

In the mid-2000s, I became interested in the emerging field of digital book publishing. And created my first EPUB in 2010. From 2011 to 2022, I worked at the startup Bookmate, which became the world’s first service to provide access to ebooks by subscription (“Spotify for ebooks”). For many years, I was responsible for EPUB production in the service.

This is me

After Russia started its big, scary and blood war in Ukraine, I couldn’t keep living and working in Russia. Now I’m in Europe and help to publish books — both print and digital — for Russian émigré publishers in Europe and the US. I also write analytical articles on Russian censorship and the situation in Russian and émigré book publishing. In addition, I teach a course called “Introduction to Publishing” at the Free University (Brīvā Universitāte, Latvia). I also run a blog on Telegram called “Words and Money.”

Main Current Projects

  • Free University Press, director
  • Freedom Letters, technical director
    (production of layouts for printing, prepress of covers, distribution to print-on-demand services, preparation of digital books and their distribution)

Pubshers — Partners & Customers

Recent publications

Skills

My skills and tools are obvious: Adobe InDesign, Sigil EPUB Editor, pandoc, VSCode, etc.

Vladimir Kharitonov