ΕλληνικαABOUT US
Publications is a publishing organization, located in Athens, Greece. The Publishing house specializes in non-fiction books, scholarly and academic books and edited volumes and focuses primarily on international relations, law, economics, psychology and philosophy. Since August 1999, Eurasia Publications has published more than 400 titles.
Eurasia Publications also includes four imprints and several magazines. Stigmos focuses on literature. Kianavgi publishes books about animal rights and veganism. Plethora Editions publishes testimonies, oral history and literature. Digma publishes plays. Epoche magazine is edited by Hellenic Society of Daseinanalysis, Hellenic Focusing Centre, and Hellenic Society for Existential Psychology “Gignesthai”. Xenophon journal focuses on financial education. Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies is a bilingual (English and Greek), peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal edited primarily by independent scholars.
OUR HISTORY
Even before the emergence of WEB 2.0. and the common European currency, we were in an old warehouse of an even older Athenian house in the foothills of Lycabettus Hill, where the signs on the walls from the bullets fired in the Civil War were still visible. It was August 1999 when we found a small book. It was published during the interwar period and it was a manifesto of a political party, containing various speeches that were made in the Parliamentary.
This was our first book. At that time, some young people have come back to Greece after studying and working abroad. When they started working on Eurasia Publications, nobody could predict how the whole project would turn out. We wish we could say that we had a specific strategy. The truth is that it was an amateur, collective attempt to publish some books, that we have already proposed to certain publishing houses and we knew were not going to be best sellers.
We were naïve and had no sense of the Greek market. We were romantic and almost blinded by our love and obsession with books. Nevertheless, we had great work experience from previous careers in different industries. Going forward, nothing else was more important for us. The founding group supported Eurasia Publications in many ways, often undertaking other projects. Later on, we developed a more coherent strategy, but still did not follow it through. We figured out why this happened, much later, the years after 2013. Eurasia Publications became what it was meant to become. We did not closely choose the path for Eurasia Publications; Eurasia Publications made their own way.
Soon, the group of friends became groups of friends. It was very often that very different people came together. The groups of friends became communities. In the beginning some of our actions might have seemed confusing for a number of people. Marketing demands the uniformity of audiences, the affinity of book covers and titles, a clear and distinct identity.
For us, and maybe we are mistaken, every book is a whole autonomous ecosystem. Anyone who has worked with our publishing house, knows that for every crucial decision we cooperation fully with the writers.
When you experiment with something, there is always the possibility of mistakes. Some times we hurried. Some times we were late. We published some books, only a few, that we should not and then we withdrew them from our catalogue. We did not publish some books, that we should have published. But our intentions were always honest. It was a conscious decision not to become a publishing house for university handbooks and academic publications. We publish books that can be sold in the bookshops. We stopped publishing writers, although they sold many books. We published young writers, who elsewhere stood no chance of being published. We refused to publish books that were well financed. We learned so many things, more that what the universities we attended taught us. We had fun and we continue to have fun. We feel like we have built something big, even if its true scale and importance may not yet be quite visible.
We made an effort, and we paid the cost for it, to avoid being categorized with one or the other political and ideological label. We invested in thinkers. Young writers and translators who were not yet well known, who were not academics. We were, and continue to be, innovative in subject areas, typographic techniques, digital environments, events. We published difficult books and established series that we knew would have no success commercially, but thought was essential for the Greek bibliography. We experimented and tested with special papers and laminations, linings and threads. We organized various events and book presentations and we even promoted books that were not ours. Still, we really liked them. We were one of the first publishing houses in Greece that created a website and were active on social media, and one of the first that filmed their events and uploaded them on YouTube. We are the first to include QR codes, in order to create soundtracks for the books. Furthermore, Eurasia Publications were among the first to use digital printing.
We organized many open seminars and workshops, conferences and conventions, outdoor events in the most unusual venues and held exhibitions abroad. We made recordings in studios and were involved in theatrical productions. In the beginning, our actions often confused people, or even made them suspicious. There were times we were inefficient. But gradually, we became aware of others following in our footsteps, sometimes even copying from us. This is not a problem for us, quite the opposite. We feel good about it.
We still have plenty ideas and projects, more than what we can materialize and implement. Books are just the means. Eurasia Publications is a place, a unique kind of construction site, where ideas are constantly being discussed, examined, produced. Eurasia Publications is an “ergotaxio idewn”.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
It’ s always difficult to describe what exactly is the essence and identity of Eurasia Publications. Obviously, it is a publishing organization. But that is not all. It is also a living organism, that gathers around it many independent and autonomous groups and operations. A writer once claimed that Eurasia Publications are a home. Well, we are indeed a Publishing House and we publish books. However, we are doing so much more. Τo be more accurate, all these ideas and people that come together here, ultimately, add up to so much more. Usually everything starts with a text or ends up in a text. All these things tend to happen in unpredictable ways. It is like giving birth or like a construction site that comes to life and is always reaching towards various new and different directions. Looking back, we have met incredible people and we have made it possible for different people and different ideas to come together. Furthermore, the truly important thing is that through all this process, really strong relationships and connections have emerged. We are interested in every worthy and remarkable person, no matter where that person comes from.
Our very first text about who and what we are was this:
The philosophy and the people of Eurasia Publications. Eurasia Publications were founded in Athens from a group of people who initially wanted to publish books about philosophy, history, economics, social sciences, epistemology, mathematics, law and international relations. We really focus on the quality of the translations, the linguistic and scientific edit of the texts, the respect for the intellectual rights and the quality of typography. This project is supported by many different groups of writers, academics and independent scholars and the cooperation among them is often expressed by different publishing marks and imprints.
This text still applies. Eurasia Publications have become a platform of communities, a “construction site” of ideas for many different groups of people, who mostly come from the fields of science and arts. There is so much going on inside and around Eurasia Publications, that often not even the publisher himself knows about them.
Different people and different worlds create in an autonomous way. Like any living organism, Eurasia Publications have a special biology. All ideas, no matter where they come from, are of great interest to us. All ideas, even the ones we do not agree with, deserve to be discussed as long as they are interesting and meet our quality standards. So many people that are completely different have sat and discussed in the round table of our publishing organization. As an effect, this diversity may not give a clear stigma. But this is not our mission. We are neither secretly nor clearly, neither consciously nor unconsciously, devoted to a certain cause. We value diversity, we appreciate hearing different things, even if some of us do not agree with them. As long as they are honest and well formulated. We do not have regard for labels that conceal insecurities and shortcomings. Our mission is to produce pieces of work of high quality, which will contribute in the world of ideas, arts and science. The protagonists are the creators. Οur existence sole purpose is the best possible support for them.
In the future we will find out what this whole ecosystem of ideas, emotions and people will produce.
We shall go on.
