Spain's domestic market sees 12% drop in 2013

Spain's domestic publishing market saw a year-on-year drop in turnover of approaching 12% in 2013, to a total of €2.18bn, according to the annual survey taken by the Spanish publishers association, the Federacion de Gremios de Editores de Espana (FGEE).

This latest fall means the market has seen a turnover drop of approaching one third (29.8%) over the five years between 2008 and 2013, the Federacion said.

The latest survey found 154 million copies were sold in 2013, a decrease of 9.6% on 2012 numbers. Publishing numbers were down 3.5% year-on-year to 76,434 titles.

Studied by genre, fiction saw the biggest revenue fall, down 17.2% to €469m (21% of the total). This result means fiction revenues in Spain's domestic market have fallen 34.3% in the last five years, according to FGEE. Children's and young adults dropped 9.8% to €267m in 2013, while school textbooks were down 9.6% to €726m.

The study also looked at turnover by distribution channel, finding that e-book distribution platforms were the biggest gainers in the year, seeing a turnover rise up just over 8% to €80.3m. This figure includes direct sales through publishers' websites, accounting for 20.5% of that revenue. E-book sales via e-tailers represented 74.5% of revenues.

Subscriptions also saw a rise, up 2.3% to €72.6m. However all other channels measured by the survey saw a fall in 2013, with independent bookstores, the largest channel in the survey, dropping just over 14% to €773.1m. Chain bookstores saw a 16.3% fall to €345.6m, while supermarket sales dropped 15.6% to €203m.

Rights sales generated €34.9m in 2013, €20.4m in author rights managed by publishers, and €14.5m for publishers' own rights sales.

The full study is available from the FCEE website.