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Natalia Pogonina (born 9 March 1985) is a Russian chess player who has been representing her country since 2004. She holds the titles of Woman Grandmaster and Grandmaster of Russia. Her highest FIDE rating was 2501.

Natalia is the reigning Olympic Women’s Chess Champion (team and individual gold), European Women’s Team Chess Champion (team and individual gold), Russian Women’s Team Chess Champion (team and individual gold) and Russian Women’s Chess Champion.

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1. As a reviewer it is of major interest for me to know, which books strong players, who reached the highest degree in chess, found especially useful and which they would recommend for the basic education of everyone who wishes to become better in chess.

Here is a list of some of my favorite chess books.

2. What do you think about the development of chess literature, especially with some promising publishing houses available nowadays, i.e. Quality Chess, Everyman Chess, Gambit books, Chess-Stars, NewInChess just to name a few. Do you have any idea which could improve modern chess literature?

In fact, I am positively surprised that authors are still working on chess books. As far as I know, an average chess book sells less than 2,000 copies, so the profit from releasing it doesn’t compensate the efforts of the author, especially if we are talking about the top players. I think most of them just love the game and feel like promoting it, sharing their passion with other people. Writing chess books is a form of educational charity.

Unfortunately, there are also many negative issues here. Certain publishers go for quantity, not quality. It is easier for them to release 10 mediocre titles than one real bestseller. They cut production costs by underpaying the authors (and, consequently, agreeing to work with just about anybody who is willing to accept their conditions), not reviewing the manuscripts well enough (resulting in misprints and chess errors), choosing generic and unattractive covers. Also, some of them are too inefficient and slow: the production cycle lasts so long that when the book actually makes it live, it is already outdated.

I believe that in general the trend is shifting towards e-publishing, and many publishing houses haven’t yet adapted to this new business framework. We will see how it goes.

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