What is "eksmo"

Eksmo is one of the largest publishing houses in Russia. Eksmo and its rival AST together publish approximately 30% of all Russian books.

Established in 1991 as a small book-selling company, they gradually developed into a major player on the Russian market, discovering and developing detective novel authors such as Darya Dontsova and Alexandra Marinina, as well as publishing works by Tatyana Tolstaya and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Tatiana Vedenska, Viktor Pelevin. Eksmo is especially successful as a publisher of Russian science fiction and fantasy, with writers like Sergey Lukyanenko, Yuri Nikitin, Vasily Golovachev, Nick Perumov, Vera Kamsha and Vadim Panov.

Eksmo was the first to familiarise the Russian reader with Artemis Fowl, a series of children's books by Irish writer Eoin Colfer. They also publish Dmitri Yemets' Harry Potter-derived Tanya Grotter series.

In 2011, Eksmo was criticized for publishing books which glorify Stalin and his henchmen, such as "Renaissance of Stalin", " Beria, the best manager of 20th century", and "Handbook of Stalinist" by Yuri Zhukov. A group of writers and artists, including Alexander Gelman signed an open letter questioning such editorial policy. Director of the publishing house responded that he can not censor tastes of their readers.