Turkish Delight: Sweet or Sour?: The Double Face of the Turkish Children’s Book Market

What does it take for an Eastern market to catch the attention of Western producers? Usually, a stable economic environment with promising sales volumes is enough for a company to focus on a new market, thus spending effort and energy to establish existence in that country. Let’s stroll in the streets of Turkey, the second fastest growing economy after China. Producers of various products are flooding into the country and dedicating their utmost attention to creating a market share. What about children’s book publishers? Turkey is a country with a population of 73 million, along with an increase of 1.5 million every year. The country has 15 million students in elementary, secondary, and high school levels. When you add the 6 million children between 0–6 years old, you face a total number of 21 million that can be attributed as the target of children’s literature. Is this country with such promising numbers attracting Western publishers? Are they spending any energy to create a market share for themselves? Let’s try to analyze the Turkish children’s Book environment by looking into the strengths and weaknesses of this market, and explore the opportunities and threats for Western publishers. I am hoping to foreground an understanding as to why they are not investing, and try to explain why they should.

Turkey is a target with a crowded population, but is it as lucrative as it looks? Is a large population meaningful if the reading population is only 4.5%? Yes, we are talking about a country whose spending value for books is less than $10 per person per year, a country that is ranked 86^th among 173 countries in a reading ratio list of United Nations. In spite of these disappointing facts, the children’s book industry has been booming in Turkey, especially within the last 10 years. The number of high quality children’s books published is increasing rapidly. Not only the Turkish authors and illustrators, but also the publishers, have the vision to think globally and act locally. They are able to produce books with local themes, treasured with a western touch. Along with the local books, foreign books are also filling up the shelves in the bookstores. The best examples of the world’s children’s literature are being translated into Turkish. Within the last ten years, the publishers have been bending backwards to publish the maximum amount of books they can (both local and foreign) so that Turkish children have access to quality literature. The amount of children’s books produced by title have increased from 431 in 2007 to 6,319 in 2011, and the total number of books sold increased from 3.1 million to 8.5 million.

Yes, book production has an inclining track in the country, but are the publishers making high profits? It is common knowledge that books are profitable products if sold in high quantities, and the above numbers are insignificant compared to the total number of books sold yearly in the Western world; e.g. more than 100 million in the USA and close to 100 million in the UK. While the number of picture books to be published in the first edition is at least 5,000 in the West, this number is generally 2,000 in Turkey.

Does this discourage the local publishers? Not at all! Interestingly, they are producing more and more titles every day, but why? Any sensible businessperson makes a cost-benefit analysis and acts accordingly when it comes to investments. Why do Turkish publishers continue publishing new children’s books, despite the fact that their return is not satisfying? The answer is obvious: they have long-term strategies.

The 21 million members of Turkey’s young population may not be reading as much as western children, but sooner or later they will, and publishers are well aware of that. How will this vast population start...