Bookstore in western Romania joins international industry network

The independent bookstore La Două Bufnițe, in the western Romania city of Timisoara, has become an associate member of the European and International Bookseller Federation (EIBF), an organization representing national booksellers associations in the European Union and beyond. It is the first bookstore in the country to join the federation, it said. The Timisoara bookstore opened in December 2016. The founders are Oana Doboși – Potcoavă and Raluca Selejan. The affiliation to the international network came after the library attended an EIBF conference at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. “It is important for us to stay up to date with what our fellow booksellers in other countries are doing and with the European and international legislative initiatives for the book market. It would be important to have in Romania an association of booksellers that is a full member of the EIBF, as publishers are part of the Romanian Publishers Federation, which is part of the Federation of European Publishers. But until this association of booksellers emerges in Romania, we chose to become an associate member of the EIBF,” Oana Doboși-Potcoavă and Raluca Selejan said. The EIBF’s mission is to further the interests of booksellers vis-à-vis the European institutions and other international organizations. It works on issues such as the favorable taxation of books in all formats to promote reading, the interoperability of e-book formats, fair lending schemes by libraries, cross-border sales of e-books, and copyright issues. While the online retail of books has increased significantly in recent years, the bricks-and-mortar bookstores in the country have become fewer. In 2015, the Romanian Publishers Association (AER) estimated that there were 150 bookstores in Romania, with several counties without any bookstores. Some of the biggest private bookshop chains belong to Carturesti and Humanitas, a publishing group. Bookshop opens at the National Theater in Bucharest (Photo source: La Doua Bufnite Facebook Page) editor@romania-insider.com