Eksmo

Eksmo (Russian: Эксмо) 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, Eksmo gradually developed into a major player in the Russian market, discovering and developing detective-novel authors such as Darya Dontsova and Alexandra Marinina, as well as publishing works by Tatyana Tolstaya, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Tatiana Vedenska, and Viktor Pelevin. Eksmo has become 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 introduced Russian readers to 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 received criticism for publishing books which glorify Stalin and his henchmen, such as "Renaissance of Stalin", "Beria, the best manager of the 20th century" (Берия — лучший менеджер XX века, 2008) by S. Kremlev, and "Handbook of a Stalinist" (Настольная книга сталиниста, 2010) by Yuri Zhukov. A group of writers and artists, including Alexander Gelman signed an open letter questioning its editorial policy. Oleg Novikov, the director of the publishing house, responded that he felt obligated to cater to the taste of his readers, and not to censor them.