Set up in 1990, RIVA has been one of the earliest private publishing houses in Bulgaria. Its thematic range has been oriented to history, philosophy, the social sciences, literature by Bulgarian and foreign authors, Greek and Latin epigraphy, musicology.

RIVA Publishers has two independent participations in the International Book Fair in Frankfurt on a special invitation extended by its organizers.

We have been working with the backing with the National Centre of Books. The Theatre Centre and the Culture National Fund at the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture, the Vitosha Programme with the French Embassy in Bulgaria, the American Institute, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Art of the Republic of Austria, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey, ILE, Dublin, Ireland, the Hungarian Book Foundation, Budapest, the Japan Foundation.

Coming out with the RIVA logo have been works by scholars and researchers of international prestige, featuring among whom are: Alexander Fol, Georgi Mihailov, Ivan Ilchev, Andrei Pantev, Aleksandr Fedotov, Dimiter Avramov, Lydia Denkova, Robert Mantran, Pierre Grimal. Jean Delumeau, Carl Popper, Paul Johnson, Harry Sags, Joseph Campbell, Francis Fukuyama, Misha Glenny, Dale Walker, J.M. Kelly, Martin Gilbert, Mike Cronin, Hans Biderman, Denis Hirota, John Esposito, Jacques Attali, Vladimir Solovyov, E.F.Shmurlo, Jeremy Black, Karl Vocelka, Benedetto Croce, Gaston Bachlar, Jacques Le Goff, Jean-Yves Tadié, Gilles Lipovetsky, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Pierre Milza, Marc Ferro, Semih Vaner, Alain Corbin, Christiane Desroches Noblecour, José Antonio Maravall, José Ortega-y-Gasset....

RIVA offers to its readers works by established writers, translated all over the world; listed among them are the names of Nobel laureates Herman Hesse, Elfride Jelinek and Yasunari Kawabata, of Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Bowen, Somerset Maugham, C. S. Lewis, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Handke, Reine Maria Rilke, Peter Turrini, Susanna Tamaro, Giovanni Arpino, William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jean Gionot. Gilbert Cesbron, Henri Troya, Paul Gimard, Michel Tournier, of Lorent Gaudé, the winner of the Goncourt award, of Phillipe Sollers, Nicolas Bouvier, Juan Carlos Onetti, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Dimitre Dinev, Dmitriy Bikov, Aleksei Ivanov, Andrei Turgenev, Andrei Volos, Maria Arbatova, Kertész Imre, Reşat Nuri Güntekin, Latife Tekin, Perihan Mağden.....

Jointly with well established world-known publishing houses like Thames&Hudson, Flammarion, Weldon Owen, Octopus, IVY Press, RIVA publishes elaborately illustrated encyclopedic books of high cognitive value, including hundreds of  colour illustrations. 

Prof. Andrey Pantev

Every assessment comes after a comparison.

 

The Riva Publishers stand out prominently at every instance of comparison and at every level. This may probably not be one of the most flourishing, but this is definitely one of the most prestigious publishing houses.

 

Just for a comparison, one needs a quick look at the period when the publishing houses were being established. They grew like mushrooms after rain and did not always carry the flame of the book. There were all kinds of publishing houses. But they often appeared as a result of that market mentality, whereby each literary fodder could become a best seller. It was precisely at that past period that the Riva Publishers built that image and dedication, preserved to this day. They have warded off the triteness of money making. During the initial, hopefully, outlived years of the new uniformity coming to the fore, Riva has overcome the temptation of commonplace popularity. It has started as the different publishing house and has remained the different publishing house. People around it have known that reading should be construed as striving to nobleness, which cannot be drowned in trade accounts. They have known that there are different kinds of reading! At that time, books of true merit were threatened by the brutal advance of the market print runs. Forever Amber was reigning supreme on the stalls over Byron, Hugo and Dostoyevski. Reading was becoming a tedious occupation for the successful and a comfort for the ill-fated! At that time Riva Publishers resisted that commercial inertia. Then something else came along. But until that time they had needed a lot of respect and faith in the readers' good taste in order to uphold that risky stand.

 

I guess they had not found it easy. Most of the books, published at that time by them, became a tacit confirmation of the striving to serious knowledge. Riva does not publish books, which can be read in bed at night, or on the benches of the tram stops. I cannot imagine an author for whom it would not be an honour or at least a flattery to be an author of Riva!