Books sales have experienced exceptional growth, especially thanks to comics and manga, but 2022 does not look as splendid.
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Masterful, but ephemeral. The French edition was led as a charm in 2021, according to statistics published on Thursday, June 30, by the National Edition Syndicate (SNE): the turnover of the sector jumped 12.4 % at 3.07 billion euros compared to 2020 and also rises 9.7 % compared to 2019. Recognition of bookstores as real essential businesses during the pandemic combined with a draconian restriction of other cultural offers has done wonder .
The SNE underlines how much this performance has been brought “by the very good health of comics (+ 55.9 %) and in particular manga, which benefited from a powerful air call with the culture pass “. This upturn irrigated other categories such as general literature (+ 4.9 %), human and social sciences (+ 4.5 %), but even more practical books (+ 17.1 %), religious works and of esotericism (+ 32.8 %), or even art books and beautiful books, which had suffered in 2020 (+ 49.5 %). Conversely, for lack of new manuals, school works fell 17.1 %.
craze for manga
By a catch -up effect – many publishers who have canceled or postponed the publication of certain titles due to uncertainties related to the health crisis -, editorial production increased sharply in 2021, by 12.5 %, to 109,480 securities. The craze for manga has, again, explained the exceptional increase in reprints.
The pocket book experienced a very beautiful vintage in 2021, since 124 million copies sold, generating almost 422 million euros for publishers (+ 14.4 %). In this format, the literature is always the size of the lion, with 60.7 million copies, and the SNE estimates that “the 2022 perspectives in terms of purchasing power of readers suggest that the dynamics in favor of Pocket book and publisher’s trend to pay him more and more attention should further increase “.
The digital book continued, in 2021, moderate growth, but SNE statistics still do not include data on the audio book. Finally, internationally, the activity of hexagonal publishing houses has started to rise, with a large volume of rights of rights (16,878 titles were sold for translations) and co -editions, especially in comics or Books intended for youth. What is little known, Chinese always largely comes at the top of the main languages of translation of French books, followed by Italian, German, Spanish and Polish.
Will the edition remain on its little cloud this year? Nothing is less sure. According to another indicator, the Observatory of the Union of the French Bookstore, sales of books in half of the independent bookstores in France fell 11.7 % between the 1 er January and June 28 . A return to normal? In any case, this is a very relative drop, since these half -yearly data increased by 10.9 % compared to the same period in 2019.