The St. Petersburg Times' Angela Davydova offers a glimpse into how publishing is done in Russia, and how publishers there "are seeing an increasingly sophisticated market for foreign literature." That may be helped by the fact that 70 percent of published books are translations, including authors like Milorad Pavic, Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami and Patrick Susskind.

According to Yelena Surinova, Astrel’s editor of translated literature, interest in foreign fiction never falters in the marketplace."The reader is always interested in what foreign authors say and write about the same problems as theirs, what contemporaries living in other countries think and do," Surinova said.

[M]ore recently, [Azbuka publishing house executive director Alexei] Gordin said, demand for new "intellectual literature" has slowed. Publishers are sticking with authors who already have an established following, and are publishing new authors only in small print runs unless they are big names like Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code."

Another trend is the growing popularity of translated crime fiction and Azbuka will publish "everything that comes that is above average," Gordin said.