Last Saturday the Fifth International Book World 2003 Fair finished its work in Kyiv. Its participants were almost 250 publishers, printing shops, and media outlets, The Day included.
Certainly, the publishers are always willing to find out how competitive is their product; this is what ratings, contests, and prizes are for. Thus the All- Ukrainian Contest’s award ceremony (including eleven permanent and seven additional nominations) was held within the framework of the fair.
The grand prize, a Nestor the Chronicler statuette, was awarded to the book, In Search of the Dreamt Ukraine, by renowned Ukrainian Mykhailo Maksymovych (Lybid Publishers, Kyiv). We are pleased to inform our readers that
The Day won the second place in the first, most prestigious contest’s nomination, Best Book on Ukraine, receiving a diploma of the Fifth International Book World 2003 Fair for the two-volume Ukraine Incognita and Dvi Rusi [The two Rus’s].
Jury member, writer Leonid KORENEVYCH, commented on the contest for The Day:
“We did not award the first to third places in one of the nominations (The Most Popular Book of the Year), since we couldn’t find any books worthy of it. We would like to have a Ukrainian author and producer as winners. Every publisher can issue two or three books, concentrating every effort on them, with a minor pressrun of 1,000. Indeed, this would be a true event; the book would be made on a European level; however, it would fail to become a cultural phenomenon. Why? Because of its limited audience; only experts in a particular field would read it. We have to react to this; on the other hand, we need to change something. For example, Lybid Publishers presented five books to the contest in different nominations. But all those books were published in a single series, The History of Ukraine’s Spiritual Memorials and Culture. We could award them a prize for the whole series. For instance, the winner in the first nomination was the 1654 Pereyaslav Rada (Smoloskyp Publishers, 5000 copies). They collected documents nobody had ever seen or published before. They are doing no less an important job than the respected Day newspaper, touring Ukraine with public presentations. The second place, the diploma for the two-volume from the Library of The Day series, is a serious claim for the future, a unique phenomenon in the media world. Mykola Senchenko, head of the Book Chamber of Ukraine, has been head of the jury for the last few years; he sees virtually all Ukrainian books, and he voted for your project.”
