Eksmo

The beginning of Eksmo's history dates back to the late Soviet Union, when only state publishing houses existed in the country. Eksmo was founded in 1991 by Alexander Krasovitsky, Oleg Novikov and Andrey Gredasov (the EKSMO brand appeared in 1993).

Businessman Alexander Krasovitsky created a trading company-distributor "Express", which ordered copies of certain books from Moscow printers and sold them in regions all over the country (and initially after the collapse of the Union - outside Russia), receiving 25-50% of the proceeds. These were mainly reprints of foreign classics, historical novels (Valentin Pikul's works, in particular, were very popular), and books that had previously been banned in the USSR. Oleg Novikov and Andrey Gredasov joined the project. In 1993, the company split: Krasovitsky created the publishing house "Folio", and Novikov and Gredasov - the company "Eksmo", the name of which was formed from the first syllables of the words "Express" and "Moscow".

The business began with wholesale trade in books, later Eksmo had its own printers and distribution. Thanks to the publication of Russian detectives (primarily novels by Danil Koretsky and Alexandra Marinina) in the late 1990s, Eksmo significantly increased its sales and became the basis of a large holding company, which included printing houses, bookstore chain "Bukvoed", publishing houses "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", "Ventana-Graf", "Drofa" and others. In the 2010s, Oleg Novikov acquired AST publishing house, which, however, remained a formally independent structure. Eksmo is the largest publishing house in Russia, one of the largest publishers in Europe, and is in the world's top 50. It publishes books in all major genres (detectives, fiction, fantasy, classics, modern literature, poetry, books for children, non-fiction), cooperates with many popular Russian and foreign authors.

INSPIRIA

The imprint Inspiria as a publishing brand was launched in October 2020. The team of the Eksmo publishing house together with the Higher School of Branding worked on the creation of Inspiria. The main distinguishing feature of Inspiria is the division of the collection of books into sub-brands by genre. Each one has its own colored belly-band. This helps readers to decide which book to choose and find the one that will give pleasure and exciting emotions.

BOMBORA

Bombora is a non-fiction department of the Publishing House «EKSMO». From 2018 every third non-fiction book in Russia is published by Bombora.

«Одри» [Audrey] Publishing — an imprint specializing on publishing books for women - on fashion, beauty, style, relationships, harmony and self-actualization.

«Хлеб-Соль» [Khleb-Sol’] / which means Bread-and-Salt Publishing / — culinary imprint, leader of the culinary book market that publishes Russian and international bestsellers.

Controversies

In 2011 Eksmo received criticism for publishing books which glorify Joseph Stalin and his inner circle, such as Renaissance of Stalin, Beria — the Best Manager of the 20th Century (Берия — лучший менеджер XX века, 2008) by S. Kremlev, and Handbook of a Stalinist (Настольная книга сталиниста, 2010) by Yuri Zhukov. A group of writers and artists, including Alexander Gelman signed an open letter questioning its editorial policy. Oleg Novikov, the director of the publishing house, responded that he felt obligated to cater to the taste of his readers, and not to censor them.

On 14 May 2025, Russian authorities arrested 10 Eksmo employees for alleged "LGBT propaganda" in books. Further raids were conducted in April 2026.

In April 2026, Eksmo’s press office stated that publications would be screened against the criteria of “extremism, foreign agents, LGBT content, pedophilia, discrediting the Russian army, and so on”. Both fiction and non-fiction are affected, such as mentions of “non-traditional relationships” in medical literature, biology textbooks, and biographies. The company stated that previously published books would also be retroactively examined. Tightening of restrictions was in response to the prosecution and sentencing of the directors of publishing houses Popcorn and Individuum for “extremism” over queer literature. Popcorn and Individuum, which had been acquired by Eksmo in September 2023, were shut down in January 2026 and September 2026 respectively.

In a July 2026 interview, Eksmo-AST president Oleg Novikov stated that they had fired employees for refusing to comply with tightened internal censorship rules, alongside numerous resignations.