The Bogotá International Book Fair will close with a brooch of gold this Sunday after two weeks of cultural and academic activities. Within this framework, the Colombian Book Chamber presented a balance of the behavior of the Colombian publishing sector during 2024.
The results showed continuous advance in sales, the production of titles, the generation of employment and the expansion of distribution channels.
In fact, sales of Books reached $ 996,624 million, which also represented an increase of 3.9% compared to the previous year.
One of the main indicators of dynamism is the number of edited titles, which last year reached 17,989, and the specimens sold, which added 37.9 million. It was also stressed that this shows a successful “adaptation of the sector to the new consumption and reading habits.”
Commercial publishers maintained leadership in the market, especially in segments such as books of general interest, technicians and scientists.
Most popular themes
Regarding the issues of the books sold, the market showed relevant growth in the sales of publications of general interest, since they occupied 40.8% of the total, with a growth of 5.3% compared to 2023. On the other hand, technical and scientific books contributed 20% of sales, increasing 5.2%. Religious publications also grew 4% when they reached 8.7% of total sales and, finally, the educational segment reported a 1.2% increase, representing 30.3% of total sales.
Points
The sales points of the most popular books remain the bookstores, with a 36 % participation on the total. They are closely followed by distributors with 13.2%, exports with 9.3%and private institutional sales that reached 8.4%. In fact, the report indicated that these four channels represent almost 67% of sales in the sector.
Punctually, for book editorials of general interest, the most important sales channel are bookstores and own points of sale, representing 55.7% of the total. For education publishers, sales prevail through distributors by representing 25.0%, followed by institutional sales to the private sector of texts with 20.1%.
For the editorials of technical and scientific books predominates the bookstores and their own points of sale with 25.6%, followed by the distributors with 10.6%. Finally, with respect to the publishers of religious books, the sale also prevails through bookstores and own points of sale, with 57.2%, followed by exports (17.0%).
national and international
The national market concentrated 90.7% of sales, presenting an increase of 4.4% compared to 2023. It was also revealed that The exports of the sector remained stable with a 7.0%participation, while re -exports decreased 9.9%.
On the other hand, imported books also grew 6.6%, showing “a sustained interest in the editorial sector for foreign catalogs and translations.”
