Líra Könyv Zrt. (Líra Books Corporation) is one of the most important participants in the Hungarian book market. The company was founded during the privatization of the former state owned book retailers in 1993 as part of Láng Holding. In 1998 Líra was separated and developed to be a company with the biggest net equity in the Hungarian book market. We play a significant role in book retailing and in book publishing as well and in August 2003 we have opened the biggest book wholesale division in the country.

We operate 73 bookstores all over the country, from which 52 shops are owned by the company and 21 outlets are managed in franchise system. All stores keep in stock a very wide range of Hungarian and foreign language fiction, non-fiction and children books. Some stores also sell CD-s, MC-s, CD-ROM-s, videos and DVD-s. The stores of the network with the biggest turnover are the Fókusz Book Stores (Budapest, Szeged, Pécs, Debrecen, Miskolc). We have several specialist bookstores and the rest are smaller general stores mostly located in the city centers and some of them are to be found in shopping malls. Our online bookstore (www.lira.hu) is well-known in the market. Both the retailer and publisher activities appear in Rózsavölgyi és Társa Ltd. (part of the Líra Könyv Zrt.). Two music shops (Rózsavölgyi and Kodály) in Budapest are managed by the ltd. and nowadays the publishing activity is revitalized of the famous 153 year old company.

We also own six publishing houses. Magvető is the leading fiction publisher in Hungary with such contemporary Hungarian authors as the Nobel Prize owner Imre Kertész, Péter Esterházy, Pál Závada, Zsuzsa Rakovszky, Lajos Parti Nagy, Attila Bartis, Ádám Bodor or István Szilágyi. Magvető also plays a significant role in publishing classical Hungarians (Géza Csáth, Antal Szerb, Gyula Krúdy, Géza Ottlik, György Petri, Ottó Orbán, Miklós Szentkúthy), notable authors of world literature (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Michel Houllebecq) and young Hungarians. Corvina Publishing house is well known in Hungary from its fine art albums, popular educational, tourism related publications and textbooks.  The main profile of Athenaeum Publishing house is the publishing of popular fiction and non-fiction books. The most famous authors of the company are Paulo Coelho, Tom Wolfe, Frank Schatzing, Lawrence Norfolk, Ibolya Görög, Laszlo Passuth and Tibor Bános. Mano Konyvek is a children’s book publishing company established in 2004. Mano Konyvek is the Hungarian publisher of the world famous Smurfs series, Lego books and Sesamee Street. Topograf Publishing house publish maps.

The biggest expansion in 2003 was the launch of our wholesale warehouse in Budapest, in Dankó street. Almost the whole selection of the Hungarian book market can be found in this warehouse.

In 2007 Líra acquired 100% of Sunbooks (3 billion HUF annual turnover), the leading Hungarian book and DVD wholesale company. Sunbooks is focusing on hypermarkets, being the largest book supplier of Tesco, Cora and Auchan. Sunbooks also has contracts with MediaMarkt, Saturn, and Office Depot. In 2008 Sunbooks moved to the Líra headquarters, today the two companies share a common procurement department.

Family Kolosi owns 88% of Líra Könyv Zrt. and small owners (partly employees of the company) own 3% of the shares. The own capital is 2 Billion HUF, from which 1,5 Billion is in properties. According to market estimates the value of the company is 4-4,5 Billion HUF.