About · Belgrade · since 2023
A book has a long life. This is ours.
Librum grew out of a simple question: why is the road from manuscript to reader so long, so expensive and so lonely? This is the story of how we have been answering it, book by book and tool by tool, for three years.
I · before 2023
The years before the beginning
Before Librum there were years in publishing and bookselling. The people who founded Librum worked where books are made, sold and offered to readers: at large publishing houses, in online book retail and on an e-book reading app that was downloaded 120,000 times in its first year.
Those years left one observation that kept repeating itself. There are far more manuscripts than places for them. An author who is not a known name waits months for an answer, and when the book finally comes out, they receive a small share of its price, usually around ten per cent.
We knew what a well-made book looks like and everything that has to happen for it to reach a reader. The question was whether that could be offered to every author, not only to the chosen few.
There are far more manuscripts than places for them.
II · 2023
The thirtieth of October
Librum was founded on 30 October 2023 in Belgrade by Nikolina Dabetić and Ivan Dabetić, as a publishing house for authors who want the kind of book a major house would publish, while keeping their rights, control and earnings.
One rule applied from day one: the author keeps the copyright, and the income from sales belongs to the author. We do the publisher’s work: editing, proofreading, typesetting, covers, ISBN and CIP, printing, the e-book edition, distribution and promotion. All in one place, without chasing five different people.
From the start we worked for authors from the whole region: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia and North Macedonia, and for those in the diaspora. The entire process can be done by email and phone, without ever coming to Belgrade.
The author keeps the rights. The income from sales belongs to the author.
III · 15+
The people behind every page
No book is made by one person. Today more than fifteen collaborators stand behind Librum: editors, proofreaders and copy editors, cover designers, typesetters, translators, developers and the people who take books to readers. Together they have more than twenty years of experience in large publishing companies.
We set up our way of working so that authors always see what happens to their text. Every change a proofreader makes stays visible and explained, and the author decides what to accept. The editorial assessment says honestly what a manuscript needs, even when that is not easy to hear.
We work with texts in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, in the ekavian and ijekavian variants, in Latin and Cyrillic script. The author’s language and script are respected; the standard is applied, but the voice remains the author’s.
Every change stays visible. The author decides.
IV · 4,000+
A door for new names
In 2024 we announced our first manuscript contest. 112 authors applied, and the editorial team read the manuscripts for more than three months. The winner was Momčilo Trifunović with the manuscript “Kišna pisma Fjodoru iz sunčanog Karakasa”.
The regional poetry contest “Zbirka 100 najboljih pesama” received more than 3,500 poems from four countries, and 89 authors made the selection. The poems were judged by Zvonko Karanović, Enes Halilović, Ana Ristović, Marko Tomaš, Milena Đorđijević and Aleksandar Ilić. The short story contest “Otkud ja?” received 486 stories from six countries, and the stories for the anthology “Marinina crvena haljina” were chosen by Dejan Stojiljković, Slaviša Pavlović and Željko Obrenović.
To date, Librum’s contests have received more than 4,000 entries. The prize is not a certificate but a book: a print run of 200 or 300 copies, or full editing at no cost. For those still learning the craft we opened workshops, led by the poets Dejan Aleksić and Enes Halilović.
The prize is not a certificate but a book.
V · 137
Books that exist
Librum’s catalogue today holds 137 books by 127 authors: novels, poetry and story collections, handbooks, monographs and children’s books. Among them are debuts, but also books by authors who already have several titles behind them.
Some books made us invent a new way of working. “Paleta sveta” is the first interactive colouring book for adults, with 50 world landmarks and video guides reached through a QR code. For authors writing for foreign markets we opened Librum House, with English-language editions, and Librum Studio for subtitles, translation and localisation.
Alongside the catalogue grew the Reading Room, a free library of advice on writing and publishing, and the Writing School with 64 lessons. The knowledge we gathered over years in publishing is now available to anyone who writes.
Publishing know-how, open to anyone who writes.
VI · 2026
From publisher to ecosystem
Working with authors showed us that the problem does not start with the publisher. It starts much earlier, with the tools. Book-writing software, spelling checkers, the keyboard on your phone: all of it is built for large languages, while Serbian and the languages of the region get a translation, if they get anything at all.
So we started building our own tools. Librum Autor is book-writing software for the Mac. Librum Gram checks spelling, grammar and commas in Serbian, on the device, without sending the text to anyone. The Librum keyboard brings Serbian to the phone, and Librum eBook more than 300 world classics in Serbian e-book editions.
Communities grew around the books too. In Librum Club writers publish and read one another, Knjigopolis gathers readers around a catalogue of 65,000 books, and more than a thousand registered players enjoy word games in Librum Quiz. In 2026 Librum Club moved to its own platform, and a new librum.rs was born.
Serbian deserves its own tools, not translations of someone else’s.
VII · today
The whole life of a book, in one place
Today Librum covers the whole journey of a book: from the first sentence written in Autor, through the check in Gram, editing and printing, to the bookshop, the e-book and the reader who writes about it in the club. Our database holds more than 25,000 users, and more than 40,000 people use librum.rs.
We are still a small team. But every decision still starts from the same question as in 2023: what does an author need for their book to reach a reader, and how can it be simpler, fairer and better made than yesterday?
The next step is new languages and partners who believe a book deserves a good life, whatever language it is written in.
Simpler, fairer and better than yesterday.
Team
More than 15 collaborators
Editors, proofreaders, designers and the people who take books to readers. Each of them leaves a mark on every page.
- 01Editors
- 02Proofreaders and copy editors
- 03Cover designers
- 04Typesetters
- 05Translators
- 06Developers
- 07Marketing and promotion
- 08Distribution and sales
The story continues.
If you would like to be part of the next chapter, as a partner, investor or collaborator, write to us.