The book sector in Spain has accumulated in the last five years a fall of almost 35% in the number of copies sold. This is what we are told by the recently published Advance of the results of the study carried out by the Federation of Publishers’ Guilds of Spain and the Ministry of Education.
A sector that does not want to see what is happening
Two years ago we published in this blog our foundational article The surprising reason why books are selling less and less every day, in which we explained the main reason, in our opinion, for the collapse of the book market.
Honestly, when I wrote that article I thought that two years later the whole sector would have realized where its difficulties come from (not necessarily because of my article, simply the worsening of the situation would lead anyone to the same conclusions) and that a great period of innovation would have opened in which all the actors of the book world would be experimenting new ways to reach the reader.
However, it seems evident that this is not the case and most continue to look for their keys where there is light and good company and not where they have gone astray. The situation is one of general bewilderment.
Sector analysis
We find exhaustive studies of the symptoms, such as those of Manuel Gil, who has been predicting the catastrophe for some time. However, they have not been able to find the true underlying cause and, therefore, do not propose solutions beyond mitigating the effects.
Publishers, the culprits?
It also seems to be fashionable to lash out against publishers, like those of Sgt. Margaret in Salvation Patrol. Do books really not sell anymore because publishers (mainly the big ones, I understand) package and promote real garbage and bought critics promote it?
Even if that were so, bad books have dominated the market for centuries and that is not why the sector has never collapsed as it has now.
Besides, on the one hand, it seems incredible that with more than a thousand publishers in this country, all of them do things badly and, on the other hand, they must have joined the initiative abroad, because the drop in sales is generalized in the world (although in few places as marked as here).
Elite opinion
To see how lost the sector is, I encourage you to read the article in the País Semanal Los guardianes del libro (The guardians of the book), in which the cream of the country’s publishing industry points out the supposed causes of the decline of the book industry, namely:
piracy, the Treasury and video games.
A few brief observations to help assess the importance of these alleged culprits.
Video games have mainly replaced television and life on the street. My son prefers playing GTA to reading, my grandfather preferred playing soccer with neighborhood friends to reading.
As for the Treasury, I refer you to Bernat Ruiz, who explains very well the senselessness of blaming the government for our ills.
Finally, piracy: there has always been piracy and there always will be. A little piracy benefits the sector because it allows those who have time but no money to participate as disseminators and prescribers. The damage arises when it grows disproportionately. In Spain, piracy is not the cause of the sector’s ills, but an effect. It has become a monster fed mainly by the weakness of the sector in digital media.
In short, here each one points to the other as guilty of their ills. We look like a hysterical henhouse and, in the meantime, the house has not been swept.
The unknown reason for the collapse
So, is there a reason that is largely unknown and is not the result of the obscure interests or ineptitude of one of the big players in the book industry? Yes, there is, and it is actually not particularly mysterious.
It is simply a change in consumer behavior over the last five or six years. Consumers now make their vital decisions (travel, shopping, leisure, etc.) in front of a screen, i.e. with the help of digital media. Computers, tablets, cell phones. This is a radical change.
The book reader is just another consumer and on the Internet it turns out that the book has disappeared. It does not appear in search engines, it is not shared in social networks and it is hardly found outside specialized circuits (literary or thematic blogs).
What is not there when we make decisions becomes irrelevant.
The book has become irrelevant.
The book is not in conversations, at least not in Facebook conversations, which are now the most frequent. It is not on Whatsapp or Instagram.
That’s why it no longer gives prestige: do you know anyone who has recently bought two meters of books to decorate their living room? In the 80’s there were plenty of them.
And we could go on like this for a long time.
True, there are a thousand nuances, there are exceptions, there are other contributing reasons, but if you want a cause that explains the root of the problem, this is it.
The solution
No one has it yet, obviously. But it is obvious that to fight the problem we will have to go to the battlefield where it is, in the digital media, and not dedicate ourselves, as most of the sector does, to look for it where it has long ceased to be.
Yes, it is true, a reading incentive plan in schools would not be a bad thing, nor would more libraries, but with these gaps we have lived centuries without the book being in danger.
In addition, most of the publishing industry’s initiatives on the Internet are related to digitizing books and optimizing their distribution, which is a necessary condition to ensure the future of the book, but not sufficient. If it were enough, Amazon would simply have eaten up the market, but globally we would still be at peak sales figures.
The problem lies in the presence of books in digital media, in the perception of the book, in the ease of discovering them. The problem is that the book is both in the right place and at the right time.
In marketing, not in distribution.
And how do you do that? Next week I will publish 8 ideas to bring the book out of irrelevance. Let it not be said that we are merely putting our finger on the sore spot….
Did you know that we can help you sell more books?
