aking into consideration the financial demands of book publishing it is clear that a diversified support system and a better use of existing resources can greatly increase the number of books in print. Despite the slightly decreasing number of new publications, the turnover of Hungarian book publishing has doubled and the number of new titles has also increased to a great extent. In 1997, the publishing of some 10,000 new works had been a good result even on in international comparison. The number of books published in 1998 had the following breakdown:

The internationally high number of publishers has today decreased to satisfy only real needs of the market. A publishing company is considered to be "big", if it publishes more than 100 titles a year. Today, there are 20 such publishers in Hungary, giving 60% of the whole trade. Small publishers have 15-20 new books issued a year, which constitutes 30% of the book-market. The remaining 10% are published by private individuals or by self-governing bodies.

Having overcome the initial difficulties, the situation of publishers has improved and became stable, so they even manage to compete on the international markets.

The Hungarian Ministry for National Cultural Heritage and other agencies are trying to support the publishing of good quality books. Their support frame-programmes focus on Hungarian literature being translated into foreign languages. This is the only way to be present on international book-markets and to have the little known Hungarian literature acknowledged as a significant part of world literature.