Joys and sorrows of the small bookcase – HOME

A reader yesterday at the bookstore La Central, in Madrid. / Samuel Sánchez

The celebration yesterday the fourth edition of Day Bookstores could not hide an insistent reality: present and future concern of small bookcase. For the fourth year, and driven by the Spanish Confederation of Booksellers’ Associations (CEGAL), small and medium businesses mounted their local festivals, lectures and cultural events, and remained open until ten at night. But while this celebration took place reenacted by mouth CEGAL itself, the fateful fact: 21% of bookstores closed their doors in Spain in the last five years

According to the National Statistics Institute. (INE), in Spain last year had 5,556 libraries, not counting large chains and shopping centers. According to the barometer Sales CEGAL the past two years, the sector had an annual turnover in Spain of 700 million euros and a turnover of about 45 million books a year. The latest data barometer for the second quarter of 2014 show a decline of 7.4% in the sale of books. It is a smaller decline than that recorded between the same periods of 2013 and 2012 (9.4%). But one thing remains heartbreaking. Between 2007 and 2014, the annual turnover of bookselling in Spain has increased from 3.123 million to 2.181

In this context, expert voices predict that small libraries whose acometan the necessary process of modernization or diversify their business (sale of objects outside the book, introduction of new models of cafés and bookshop …) will die a slow death. No lack certain fatalistic logic in this, for a country whose reading rates are far from the European average, and where institutional campaigns promoting reading have proved ineffective time ago.