publishing policy in post-soviet country

[Veva]

Hi, I am currently reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and I came to realise that this kind of feminist literature is missing in my country. This copy I am holding of The Second Sex from 1968 is the only translation we get in here and many copies of these have been destroyed due to the following regime.
But now, not even talking about Friedan or Miller, I think that my post-soviet Slovakia happens to avoid something old, but yet so new. If on purpose, I have no idea.
So my question now is, why today, when we have the freedom, do our publishers get enought state funding for titles like 'Men are from Mars, Women from Venus' but there is not enough for Beauvoir?
There is simply no space for other, more philosophic literature. You might argue about the objectivity of this book, but we cannot deny that something is wrong about this kind of policy. :brickwall

[mal4mac]

Your publishers get state funding for selling best sellers? How do I get to work for these publishers :D?

[Veva]

Most of our cultural organisations, like theatres or publishing companies still get more than half of their funding from state (i.e. Ministry of Culture), otherwise they would be in red numbers (now with the credit crunch it would be even worse). :(

[mal4mac]

Track down the translator of your 1968 work and see if you can get the rights to publish it. Maybe you could do this at no cost on Lulu? This seems a great gap in the market just waiting for someone to fill. Why not you? It seems a bit strange, me being a 'capitalist Westerner' to even think about complaining about the state not publishing it. The response in the UK would be: "what's the state got to do with it?" Join the new Euriope! Forget the state and get publishing. Oops I'm starting to sound like a Thatcherite... I'm not, I'm a great fan of the NHS and BBC. But this is an area where capitalism can, and does, work well.

Have you read Dosteovsky's Crime & Punishment? There's a great sup-plot about Rasolnikov's friend trying to start a publishing house in Russia to publish translations of Western works. Read it. Be inspired.