PUBLISHING CIRCULATION SYSTEMS VERSUS THE BOOK MARKET IN TODAYS POLAND (Obiegi wydawnicze a wspólczesny rynek ksiazki w Polsce)

A proposed description of today's publishing movement in Poland, drawn using primarily the distribution key. A 'main' popular/commercial circulation is discerned along with three 'lesser-reach profiled circulations'. Following Przemyslaw Czaplinski, the former is called a 'book-trail' (Polish, ksiazkostrada)] and identified with the dominant chains such as EMPiK. 'Profiled circulations' (i.e. scientific, religious and literary) are compared to local roads from any of which you can enter the publishing 'highway' as well. The closer the distribution centre, the larger the heterogeneity and dispersion of what is inside there - and, the other way round: the closer the peripheries, the stronger the uniformity and specialisation of offer. It is also proposed that former 'vertical' metaphors with which socio-literary phenomena have been described, be replaced by 'horizontal' ones. The 'high-artistic' and 'popular' circulations do not form an expressive opposition today; neither does the system of ‘main circulation' vs. 'profiled circulations'. Moreover, in the author's opinion, the notion of 'literary circulations' has become problematic in itself - and ought to be replaced by 'publishing circulations'. Only in the latter's content should participation of literature in the book market as a whole be investigated.