The Polish Book Institute

Polish Book Market 2018

By Piotr Dobrołęcki of Biblioteka Analiz Sp. z o. o. © The Polish Book Institute.

The Polish book market accounts for almost 3 per cent of the European publishing market, while Poland’s population accounts for 7.5 per cent of the total population of the European Union. Thus one might assume that the Polish book market should be on a growth trend, despite the present stagnation that began in 2011.

The Polish book market accounts for almost 3 per cent of the European publishing market, while Poland’s population accounts for 7.5 per cent of the total population of the European Union. Thus one might assume that the Polish book market should be on a growth trend, despite the present stagnation that began in 2011.

At the end of 2017, in the ISBN database maintained by the National Library, there were almost 42,000 publishers registered in Poland, though not more than 2,000-2,500 of them are active (publishing several books in the course of the year).

There are many factors to imply that the extremely demanding creative sector represented by the Polish book market has significant potential for growth, including a relatively low level of readership, the strong role of prices as a basic tool for competition among the individual segments of the market, consistent growth in activity by institutional programmes, and financial contributions from the state budget for the development of readership and in support of the publishing sector.

At the same time, many internal market factors are limiting this growth potential. The most critical of these include: over-exploitation of the sale price of books to the end user as a basic tool for promotion and marketing, unequal commercial margins and sales wars between individual distribution channels, and also the low profitability of entities in the retail sector resulting from the aforementioned policy.

However, the market is still highly concentrated. A group of almost 300 entities holds almost 97 per cent of it. Approximately 600-700 firms publish more than ten books per annum. According to estimates produced by Biblioteka Analiz, approximately 250 firms achieved a turnover of or above 1 mln zlotys (€ 234,700), and approximately 120-130 achieved a turnover exceeding 2 mln zlotys (€ 469,500) in 2017. Most of the other registered publishers have only issued a very limited number of books and do not take part in the publishing market.

By Piotr Dobrołęcki of Biblioteka Analiz Sp. z o.o.