Despite media reports to the contrary, Spain’s publishing industry is robust and diverse, and investing for the future, writes Antonio María Ávila.

From Publishing Perspectives.

"The Spanish publishing industry is worth close to 6 billion euros, employs over 110,000 people (authors, publishers, suppliers, booksellers, librarians, literary agents, etc.) and is refining an internationalization process begun more than 50 years ago.

Despite the discouraging scenario depicted by the media, this sector is highly competitive, showing a much lower concentration index than other markets in Europe like France, UK and Germany, to mention a few. In the Spanish market, currently there is not a single publishing group that enjoys a dominant position. If we take into account the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, which indicates the degree of market concentration, the book market in Spain is rated at 0.35 (reasonably far from 1.00 indicating a monopoly). This index demonstrates that the structure of the sector is very competitive."

Read more here.