(opinion essay)

On April 24, 2023, I had an opportunity to listen to a lecture by a professional working in the publishing industry, namely, a lecture by Mykyta Mazur.

Mykyta Mazur is a former student of the Institute of Journalism. He was a member of the Student Council of the Institute of Journalism and the head of the information committee of the Student Parliament of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, currently a curator of LITOSVITA projects.

The lecture was in an online format. All the students of the Department of Publishing attended it with their supervisors. This lecture was one of the tasks during the educational practice at the university, so it brought a lot of interesting and useful information.

Mykyta Mazur shared his experience and his own observations in the book publishing business and talked about the trends of the publishing market during the martial law in the country.

The moment I liked the most of the entire lecture was when the lecturer offered us a selection of Telegram channels, it was beneficial to save a few to subscribe and follow them later. These were very useful resources, but Mykyta advised us to read the Telegram channels, but not to read the comments under posts, because mostly there are people without any experience in the publishing business and they are either arguing or trying to prove something to someone. Also, it was fascinating to hear about the main book events, how they happened and how many of them there were since the beginning of the war.

Thus, I can conclude that it was very interesting for me to listen to the person who already works officially in the specialty he studied at the university, and after the lecture to ask the questions that worried us and to get advice from a professional about the book publishing business.

I really enjoyed this lecture, because it became an important component in the foundation of our future experience. So, while thinking about the rhetorical question about the future of the publishing business in Ukraine, “To be or not to be?” I can say firmly, “To Be!”