If the pandemic produced a significant increase in book sales in 2020 -2.4%- despite the fact that bookstores were closed for several months, the phenomenon has accelerated in 2021. The report on the Internal Book Trade in Spain that just presented by the Federation of Publishers Guilds indicates that last year saw the greatest growth in the publishing sector so far this century, 5.6%, reaching a turnover of 2,576 million euros.
Some good news for the sector, which is even more so because the item that is increasing the most is that of the readers of the future, children's and youth literature, which in 2021 soared by 17.8%, well above the rest of the subjects and which in two years has gone from 312 to 423 million in sales. Of course, despite the notable increase last year, the global turnover figures of the publishing sector still do not reach those of 2008, when the economic crisis broke out and it was sold for a value of 3,000 million euros.
"The data is frankly good, not to say that it is extraordinary," said Daniel Fernández, president of the Federation of Publishers' Guilds, who also stressed that the growth was due to the sale of more copies - a 5.9 % more- and not because of the increase in the price of books, whose average price has fallen slightly to 13.97 euros. The book for children and young people has skyrocketed, he explained, "overcoming the traditional gap that separated Spain from the most read and civilized countries in the EU", and the only area that has suffered -with a drop of 3.8%- it has been the non-university textbook due to the uncertainties of the entry into force of the new education law. As for the digital book, he has pointed out that it remains at 5% of the total volume of the Spanish market, but has grown slightly more than the paper one: 6.8%.
"The results of the report are the verification that in 2021 the rediscovery of the book and that rebirth of the pleasure of reading has been clearly consolidated", he pointed out, and recalled that "it continues to be in bookstores where books are bought the most despite to the logical increase in online sales, especially in the pandemic". But he has stated that if the data for Spain are good, those for book exports are not so good, especially to Latin America, sales hit by the pandemic and the enormous rise in transport costs.
Paradoxically, the publishing sector, despite selling less abroad than in 2020 -a 0.73% drop- contributes even more this year to the Spanish trade balance, up to 30 million more, going from a positive balance of 250 to one of 283 million euros. The explanation is that in reality more books are sold abroad -a 1.31% increase- and that the area really most affected is the Spanish graphic industry, whose printing orders have fallen from 53 to 42 million. But precisely this same effect of making transport more expensive has caused the rise in costs of Spanish printing orders in countries like China to drop to 105 million from 217 in 2019.
In total, 174.1 million paper books were sold in Spain in 2021, plus another 13.49 million in digital format, and Fernández stressed that in terms of number of employees, turnover and social impact, the book sector is the largest cultural industry in the country and that represents 1% of the Spanish GDP, "although it is sometimes difficult for us to be recognized as an industrial sector, and we are a first-class sector". In that sense, he has welcomed the fact that the Government is finally betting on them in the new Perte of the Spanish that has Cristina Gallach as high commissioner. "The French are very clear about the importance of language as a factor of growth and prosperity, here it has been harder to see it," she concluded.
