Book sales up 8% on 2019

Portugal’s book market saw retail sales up 8% by April this year on like-for-like pre-pandemic sales in 2019.

This is according to data from the Portuguese Association of Publishers and Book Retailers (Associação Portuguesa de Editores e Livreiros (APEL)) which shows that book sales are gradually recovering in line with other sectors in the culture economy.
President of APEL, Pedro Sobral, said: “We need public policies to encourage reading and book purchasing by lowering VAT, for example”.
“Particularly at a time when the Portuguese market suffers from low reading and literacy indices” Pedro Sobral told ECO Online on World Book Day. The 8% increase is based on data collected on 10 April which showed that the market is growing 42% in value to week 14 of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021.
However, Pedro Sobral, who also heads the Leya publishing group, revealed that in 2021 “the market was totally shut down for 10 weeks and partially shut down for a further two months”.
But when comparing sales for the current year to April 10 with the first 14 weeks of 2019, the market grew 8%”, he said.