How to enter a self published book into Russian library

Question

My late father wrote a book in Russian. He self published it, and registered it with the USA Library of Congress.

I tried twice to upload a picture here but keep getting error messages.

His deep wish was to have it be part of library in Russia. I am in Russia now for another 2 days and I have a copy of the book. It's in 2 volumes.

How can I find out the process and possibilities of doing this, to fulfill his wish?

My secondary interest would be to find out how to start selling it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Your best bet is to contact the administrative department of a specific library. You might have the most possibility of luck with a small local branch, maybe in your father's home town, or someplace else with a direct connection.

It would have probably been best to start the process early, but at worst, you can always mail them the book if they accept it.

I'm not in Russia, but this is the process I successfully used to get my own self-published book placed on the selves of my hometown library.

Answer 2

In Russia more than anywhere people are moving towards the digital reading. One of the reasons to that is a poor management of libraries. Few years ago one of the major libraries was consumed by fire because all smoke alarms were malfunctioning for years. But ahoy! Most of the books were preserved digitally - by pirates. Not by government entity that got money for scanning those books. In Russia today, online piracy is the only decent library.

So what is your real goal? If you want a copy of the book to reside somewhere in Russia, visit any town library and make a donation - they would be happy to take anything that is decent. But if you want the book to be read by Russians - drop it on the net. I can PM you the addresses. If you want to sell the hard copies there, you would need a publisher - self-publishing is not established much and would require a lot of real presence.