The future of the book industry: from recovering traditional bookshops to audiobooks

The first half of 2021 saw 44% growth in book sales in Spain compared to the same period of 2020, with an annual turnover in the region of €1.1 billion. Catalonia, with 22% of the total, was the region with the highest book sales in Spain. Furthermore, and in spite of online sales, 68 out of every 100 books sold were bought in book shops.

So are we reading more on paper or in digital format? Estimates suggest that, in the case of highly awaited new releases, e-book sales accounted for between 15% and 25% of sales in Spain, and as much as 40% in some cases.

The publishing industry thus finds itself in a new production ecosystem in which traditional paper books live side by side with e-books. New ways of reading have appeared, driven by content digitization and an intensive use of the internet and all kinds of electronic devices with screens. All this has forced institutions and industries linked to the world of books and the promotion of reading to invest in training so they can face what has been described by Teresa Iribarren, a teaching staff member of the Master's Degree in Digital Publishing of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and leader of the Catalan Literature, Publishing World and Society (LiCMES) research group of the UOC's Faculty of Arts and Humanities, as "a paradigm shift in all professional profiles linked to the world of books".

Mobile phones and interacting with authors on social media

"Thanks to our mobile phones, we're reading more than ever, and doing so from wherever we are," said Teresa Iribarren, who has written about this topic for the open access publication Revista de Biblioteconomia i Documentació. The. This member of faculty of the UOC was referring to texts of all kinds, ranging from WhatsApp messages or social media contents to paper books, which are still people's preferred book format. "It's all reading: it's just the way we do it that changes," she noted.

Digital reading is multichannel and discontinuous. "You can interrupt your reading to find out more about a specific matter, for example," said Iribarren. "It also allows you to interact with the author or other readers," she added, for example on social media such as Twitter. These new ways of reading require an increasing degree of accessibility and interactivity. On the other hand, as Iribarren explained, reading on paper is an "isolated, one-way activity, fostering a more immersive and distraction-free reading experience."

Institutions and industries linked to the world of books and the promotion of reading must adapt to this new paradigm resulting from the emergence of digital reading. "The new patterns of online culture consumption, and more specifically digital reading, have cultural and economic consequences of great import," asserted the UOC researcher. Iribarren supported this statement by emphasizing three recent phenomena driven to a large extent by the context of the pandemic: the increase in digital lending of literary texts by public libraries, the appearance of audiobooks and the creation of new traditional bookshops.

Digital publishing training has grown with the pandemic

The UOC offers a Master’s Degree in Digital Publishing to help the industry adapt to the digital transformation of book production processes. The programme, which teaches students about both traditional publishing and the technical tools and specializations required for digital book publishing, has seen a significant increase in the number of students enrolled since the start of the pandemic. Anyone wishing to pursue a career in the book industry knows that it is essential to acquire the relevant knowledge and competencies to address the digital transformation of the book industry. Only this way will they, as future publishers, be able to make well-founded decisions and implement imaginative and efficient solutions.

The UOC's master's degree programme was created in response to the demands of the publishing world and both public and private institutions linked to the world of books. An example of this is the growing need for businesses to produce digital versions of their books. The programme also equips students with the necessary skills to design and carry out the creation, distribution, sale and promotion of both paper and digital books.

"The creation and consolidation of the master's degree has been – and continues to be – a constant challenge," stated the UOC faculty member. Iribarren stressed that this discipline is still very much in its infancy, and we must therefore “pay close attention to all the information generated around changes and new reading and authoring practices, devices, software, business models, platforms, and so on”. Enrolment for the master's degree, which has been available since 2014, will reopen in March.

Related article

Iribarren, Teresa. "La lectura digital: el canvi de paradigma en la formació dels futurs editors" Item: Revista de Biblioteconomia i Documentació, [online], 2021, Vol. 2021, No. 71, https://raco.cat/index.php/Item/article/view/393636

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