During book month I have participated in the Castelló and València book fairs signing copies of my novel The Ebony Star, and I gave a talk about the literary ecosystem, which was attended by almost 400 people; and where I provided interesting data that demystifies some beliefs and that I want to share with you.
We start with good news: according to data from the study on reading and book purchasing habits in Spain in 2023, more and more reading is being done in our country. The number of people who do it regularly reaches 64.1% and has grown by 8.5% in the last decade. The negative part is that just over a third of Spaniards do not read.
Reading habits are notably different by territory, age and gender. Thus, where it is most commonly read is in Madrid, with 73.5%, and the least in Extremadura, with 54.4%. The Valencian Community is average, 64%. There are more women who read than men, 68.6% compared to 59.3%. This is something common in the world. A study of 65 countries reveals that this is the case in all of them. The age group with the highest percentage of regular readers in free time is 14 to 24 years old, reaching 74%, followed by 25 to 64 years old, with 65.8%. The number of people over 65 years of age reaches 53.7%, but with a very striking fact: in the last decade it has grown by 40%. If this continues, in the next decade it could be on par with the intermediate range.
According to data from the GfK consulting firm, around 28,000 books are published in Spain per year (27,886 in 2023), which means that 112 new titles go on sale every business day. If we were to take a random person, they would only have news of a tiny amount of the sea of books that come out each year. The vast majority go unnoticed. According to CEGAL, the Spanish confederation of booksellers, 1,311,465 different titles were sold in Spain last year. Due to physical space limitations, only a tiny part of this amount can be available on the shelves of a bookstore.
If we combine the data from the two previous paragraphs, we understand the striking data provided at the XXV Bookstore Congress: 86% of the published titles sell less than 50 copies. Only 0.1% of titles sell more than 3,000.
A sector that is going more
Every year we are faced with a great inflation of new books that does not correspond to the demand. Resorting to self-publishing, which anyone can do if they have enough money, fuels this inflation.
The book sector is going from strength to strength. Billing has grown by 24% in four years (from 929 million in 2019, before the pandemic, to 1,151 in 2023). 45% of copies are purchased in bookstores, a stable percentage in the last decade. What has grown a lot is online shopping, going from 4% in 2011 to 29% today (this includes online purchases in bookstore chains, department stores and even in physical bookstores with a virtual dimension). Therefore, it is false that young people read little, that they read less and less because they use mobile phones more and watch more TV (series and movies) and that bookstores close because they now buy books. online.
Professor and writer
