Director general of Kommersant Publishing House Andrey Vasilev (left) and the Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov take part in a news conference summoned to present Kolesnikov's books "I Saw Putin!" and "Putin Saw Me!" published by the Russian publihser EKSMO. The news conference was held in the Interfax news agency headquarters.
Photo: Vasily Shaposhnikov
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Rush Around a New Book about Putin: Wholesalers Buy Up 30,000 Copies
December 9, EKSMO Publishers has decided to print extra edition of “I Saw Putin!” and “Putin Saw Me!” books by a Kommersant journalist Andrey Kolesnikov, RIA Novosti reports.
Total run of collected articles about the Russian president, published in Kommersant over the past four years has, so far, made 30,000 copies. According to the publisher, the price for the two volumes in a hard cover with a jacket and with Vladimir Putin’s exclusive photographs will make no more than 300 rubles (about $11).
The author of two-volume edition has explained that the publisher will have to do the run-on due to intense interest to the book. “By end of the day on Wednesday, retailers ordered virtually all the copies,” Kolesnikov explained.
Kolesnikov told the agency’s correspondent he had not published the book earlier because he had fears it would not be bought. “Now, I have no fears,” Kolesnikov said, adding that after numerous proposals from publishers it became simpler for him to publish his articles than explain why he should not do so. Answering the question, who the book is written for, he said “For all those who wanted but for some reason couldn’t read my articles.”
In his interview to Radio Svoboda (Radio Freedom), Kolesnikov confessed he had no idea why they still had not expelled him from the Kremlin pool for ironical stories about the official side of Vladimir Putin’s life that made the administration officials choke with either indignation or laughter, while reading them. The radio correspondent asked the author of the potential bestseller whether he was tired with the main character, and Kolesnikov admitted: “Not without it. But there’s that all-conquering force of habit… I’ve got used to him.”
Kolesnikov’s main merit is the way of presenting boring official events in a lively and interesting way. His stories written in the as-it-happened narrative style, pay a lot of attention to details such as facial expressions and gestures, and poke fun at Putin and other leading politicians. "I wanted to prove that this can be a human interest genre," he said in his interview.
Let us remind you that, in 2000, Kolesnikov co-wrote a book with another Kommersant journalist Natalya Gevorkyan and a member of Putin’s Press Service Natalya Timakova, called “First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President.” Then, Putin’s election headquarters bought up the entire edition of the book amounting to 50,000 copies from Vagrius Publishers, because the Central Election Committee found in it signs of pro-Putin propaganda and discouraged free sale of the edition. The headquarters distributed the books free.
Last year, Kolesnikov's predecessor as Kommersant Kremlin pool reporter, Elena Tregubova also wrote a book about the Kremlin inhabitants "Tales of a Kremlin Digger".
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