The Debate | Are Too Many Books Being Published in Spain?

The book, an essential educational and cultural conduit, is also a consumer good upon which an expanding market is built: Spaniards are increasingly reading more (especially women and young people), and the sector’s revenue has risen over 30% in the last decade, according to data from the publishers’ guild, which publishes over 250 titles each day.

Regarding the causes and effects of this vast production, differences of opinion exist between the editorial director of Alfaguara and the literary division of the Penguin Random House Group, Pilar Reyes, and the editor of the Errata Naturae label, Rubén Hernández.

Abundance in culture is not a problem

Pilar Reyes

Luther, in his Table Talks, complained that “the multitude of books is a calamity.” Even then, six centuries ago, it was emphasized that too many were being published. It has become a common theme in the publishing industry, just as it was to predict the death of the printed book after the advent of the eBook, the disappearance of bookstores with the rise of large e-commerce platforms, or the supposed refusal of young people to read, drawn in by their fateful addiction to screens. However, the data shows a very different reality.

According to the 2024 reading habits report from the Ministry of Culture, for the first time, the percentage of the Spanish population that reads books exceeds 65%. Compared to 2017, leisure readers have increased by 5.8 percentage points. The percentage of frequent readers also grows: it now exceeds 50%, representing a rise of 3.8 points in the same period. But the most encouraging data relates to young people—whom we often imagine trapped in social networks—: 75.3% of Spaniards aged 14 to 24 report reading books in their free time. There is also an increase in households with children under six years old where they read aloud: 78%, up from 76% the previous year.

The revolution that the internet was supposed to bring to the book world has not been so much about replacing the format (paper versus screen) but a profound transformation of consumption habits and ways of accessing reading. The confinement of 2020, caused by the pandemic, accelerated forces already in motion, compressing years of change into just a few months. Many assumptions we considered immutable began to crumble. This situation can indeed be destabilizing, but it is also a source of creativity and renewal. From my perspective, the increase in book publishing is precisely a response to this.

One significant fact is the increase in online sales of physical books. This has removed many of the spatial limitations imposed by traditional editorial offerings and allowed not only for greater circulation of new titles but also for the continuous accessibility of the backlist. In Spain, this phenomenon, already common in other countries, has occurred without detriment to bookstores. On the contrary, bookstores have strengthened and consolidated as the most important actor in ensuring diversity of offerings and giving voice to new authors.

On the other hand, the digital ecosystem—and, in particular, social networks—has allowed practically any book to have its showcase. Previously, only a small percentage of what was published could aspire to visibility through promotional campaigns and marketing that captured, if only for a moment, the attention of a reading community amid an overwhelming leisure offer. Nowadays, the reader is also an active broadcaster: they share their discoveries and enthusiasms on social media with other like-minded readers, who, in turn, act as recommenders. Undoubtedly, one reason more books are published today is that more books have the opportunity to be read.

In this context, the role of the editor as an arbiter of what should be read has radically changed. Social networks and the internet, by facilitating direct access to an immense amount of content, have completely transformed how we consume written culture. Current editorial work also involves listening to those multiple conversations and reflecting them, with professional and selective criteria, in catalogs that cater to different readers: from the most demanding to the most casual. Books are simultaneously a reflection and an impetus of a changing culture.

In an expanding market and a country where reading is being consolidated as a daily practice, the growth of editorial publishing finds justification. More books are not a problem: abundance of supply is rarely an issue in any sector, let alone in culture.

Overproduction is a business model

Rubén Hernández

Of the nearly 90,000 books published in Spain each year, a third are returned to the shadows of warehouses and are likely to be pulped. This is called overproduction. However, it must be understood with nuance and in a broader context. In this sense, Karl Marx already demonstrated in Capital that overproduction is a phenomenon inherent to capitalism and becomes more pronounced in times like ours, with unchecked growth of economic inequalities, where the rich become obscenely wealthy and the middle and lower classes become increasingly precarious. And if the vast majority of society lives with less money, they buy fewer books: underconsumption and overproduction are two sides of the same coin. Let us ask ourselves: which European countries have the best quality of life, according to the prestigious Global AlTi Social Progress Index? Norway and Denmark. And which European countries have the highest reading rates according to Eurostat? Norway and Denmark. The fight against editorial overproduction is therefore a social struggle.

However, if we want to delve into the specific problem of overproduction of books in Spain, the first question would be: who produces? According to the Federation of Publishers’ Guild, three out of four books come from the large groups. A good starting point for tracking overproduction… But it’s not just about statistics; it’s also about strategies. Recently, a good friend, an excellent editor in a large group, told me this: he currently edits 14 titles a year, with his tongue hanging out and missing many hours of his child’s childhood. Yet he has just been informed from above that next year he must edit 27. You can imagine how he’s going to do that… And this is not an isolated case. The underlying issue is that sales per title are reportedly collapsing for the large groups (among other things, because less demanding and loyal readers spend increasingly more time in front of screens). So they seem to be implementing a casino strategy: publish more books, bet on more numbers in the roulette wheel, and hope that some hit.

However, overproduction goes beyond the major groups. In fact, it resides in the very heart of the book ecosystem that is worth knowing. The author writes a book, the editor publishes it at a price, say, 10 euros, and sends it to the distributor, who sells it to the bookseller. The bookseller buys it at a discount of around 35%, from which they obtain their profit, paying the distributor 6.5 euros, who keeps 2 euros and pays the remaining 4.5 to the editor, who pays their part to the author. Everyone covers their expenses and seeks profit. And what happens to that one out of three books that doesn’t sell? The bookseller returns it and claims their 6.5 euros from the distributor, who doesn’t pay them but offers credit instead. In turn, the distributor claims their 4.5 euros from the editor, who doesn’t pay them back, thus incurring a debt. To repay it, the editor has no choice but to invest the 4.5 euros they earned (but owe) into another book that, once it reaches the bookseller, activates their credit, while the distributor collects another 2 euros. Thus, one out of three times a book is published, the editor and the bookseller receive debts or credits. The distributor, however, always holds real capital. Simplifying a bit, we could say that for the bookseller and the editor, sales are fundamental; for the distributor, the flow is fundamental. Does this make the distributors the villains of the story? Not at all. But it seems that their business model (like that of the large groups) is prone to increasing flow, and with it, overproduction.

What’s the solution? Of course, it’s not just about publishing fewer books, but about increasing reading communities with economic, educational, and cultural measures that address the neoliberal demands that bog down the entire sector. Essentially, something like making ourselves Norwegian or Danish.