The Charles Bridge on the Vitava, January 13. Image – Getty: Mirko Kuzmanovic
By Jarosław Adamowksi | @JaroslawAdamows
Book Sales Are Declining for a Third Year
Members of the Czech Republic’s publishing industry say they still hope that after a weak 2023 when the book market’s value contracted by some 1 percent, the introduction of a zero-percent value-added tax (VAT) last year will allow the sector to improve results in 2025.
Executives including those of the Czech publishing group Albatros Media say the tax cut from February 2024 has provided the industry with a much-needed chance to take a breath, but that it won’t solve all of this market’s problems.
The text of the latest market report released by the Prague-based Czech Booksellers’ and Publishers’ Association (SČKN) reads, in part, “The year 2023 was not an easy one for the inhabitants of the Czech Republic or for the Czech economy. Even more so for the Czech book market.
“The decrease in the turnover of print books by about 4 percent and the overall decrease by about 1 percent may not seem dramatic. But this is a comparison of absolute amounts —without taking into account inflation [which] was 10.7 percent.
“However, books became more expensive by ‘only’ around 6 percent” in 2023.
Josef Žák, the sales and marketing director of Albatros Media, tells Publishing Perspectives that in spite of the market downturn reported in 2023, last year enabled his company to accomplish a number of goals.
“Despite the unfavorable development of the book market and the Czech economy in general,” Žák says, “we managed to achieve most of our main goals.
“In 2024, we published approximately 10 percent more new titles in the Czech market. Our turnover, excluding special operations and exports, reached 15-percent year-on-year growth.
“The main growth driver was the decrease in the VAT rate from 10 percent to 0 percent from January 1, 2024.
“Other drivers were the [company’s] acquisition of Baronet Publishing in summer 2023. Baronet specializes in romance and is a Top 10 ebook imprint. That’s the dynamic growth in the digital content market for us.
“It reflects greater number of strong bestsellers, including the first two volumes of the “Empyrean” series by Rebecca Yarros. Our total print book sales in terms of units were flat year-over-year.”
Positive and Negative Factors
In a worrying development, Žák says that new book sales in the Czech Republic have been declining for a third year. “The average number of copies sold is also declining,” he says.
And yet on the contrary,” he says, sales of ebooks and audiobooks are growing rapidly. In a now-familiar trend in European markets, sales of English-language books, especially young adult (YA), are accelerating. And the popularity of online antiquarian booksellers is rising quickly.
“The book buyer simply has more options and the market is fragmenting,” Žák says. “This puts pressure not only on publishers, but especially on traditional brick-and-mortar book retailing. Albatros Media therefore plans a more moderate production growth, continuing to focus our attention on digital formats, especially audiobooks.”
In Žák’s view, while the zero-percent VAT rate increases the profitability of book publishing in the Czech Republic, many local publishers still are reducing their plans for new releases.
“But otherwise, the impact of the change was of course positive for all players,” he says, “including authors or translators. It has provided publishers and booksellers with some financial cushion and time to adjust to the reality of a declining market. If the rate had remained at its original level of 10 percent, the picture of the book market today would be considerably more dramatic.”
Local booksellers also face challenges. Many of them, Žák says, are pushing Albatros Media to seek alternative ways of selling its titles.
“In response to the weakening of traditional book retailing,” Žák says, “we’ll work harder to find new alternative sales channels and direct routes to readers.”
The Czech Republic is scheduled to be Frankfurter Buchmesse’s guest of honor market in 2026.
More on the Czech book market is here, more on VAT in various markets is here, and more on the book industry in Europe is here.
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