Jesús Badenes: “With every purchase, our goal is to strengthen the sector.”
In the novel The Labyrinth of Spirits, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964-2020), an editor named Badens appears, from the fictional Orbe publishing group, who, thanks to the vegetable garden he maintains at his farmhouse in the Empordà, supplies food to his colleagues during the famine of the Spanish Civil War. The vegetable garden is, in fact, one of the hobbies of the top editorial executive of the Planeta group, Jesús Badenes (twenty-five years in the position, no joke), who meets with this newspaper in a Barcelona café to discuss the latest developments in the book market.
Qualities “Europe is the great powerhouse of content; the world’s leading publishers are here.”Two months ago, he spoke at the European Parliament in Brussels, representing the publishers...
The European Commission is preparing a code of conduct for generative artificial intelligence models, and the European Publishers Federation also organized a meeting with people from the music and newspaper industries. Our spokesperson—and the most sensible person—was the 80-year-old Swede Björn Ulvaeus, one of the founders of the group ABBA. AI must respect existing intellectual property; it can't simply uproot it. The European Parliament's legislation is sufficiently protective of individual property rights. Look, the likelihood of the European Union having a major search engine like the Chinese or Americans is low; that technology isn't our strong suit. But, on the other hand, Europe is the great power in the creation of cultural content. If you look at the major global publishing groups, almost all of them have offices in Europe. Random House is headquartered in New York but is owned by Bertelsmann, which is European.
What is AI used for in the publishing world?
We have to start from a very important foundation: the publishing industry thrives on intellectual property. Today, we all see opportunities not in content creation but in financial and commercial matters... But we don't think we should use it yet, until it's regulated. We have our foot on the brakes.
In fact, there have been protests from booksellers against AI-powered book covers, in some cases affecting Destino...
We generate a significant portion of our covers with outside help. From now on, we're signing contracts that don't allow us to do that. We believe our books must bear our seal of quality, and that means they have to be created and supervised by someone. Otherwise, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Read also Catalan book publishing is concentrated in three groups Francesc Bombí-Vilaseca
Another publishing house recently published a book written by an AI, an essay by a Korean theoretical thinker...
We don't do that, nor is it even considered. It's possible that, in the future, we'll one day have to regulate the issue with writers as well. Some translators already use AI tools as an aid; that's different. It's like if you're in finance and you use a calculator. It's a matter of process, using it as a tool not a substitute but a complementary one.
Planeta has just acquired the independent Catalan label Periscopi. Why?
Just like when we became a shareholder in Grup 62, at the request of La Caixa, the ultimate goal was to strengthen publishing. At that time, it was clear that Grup 62 was in the hands of someone other than a publisher, and La Caixa believed there was a need for a specialist in publishing management and approached us. Then the Enciclopedia group also joined. It turns out they didn't participate in subsequent capital increases and kept the distribution side, while Planeta kept the publishing house. Random House has also bought publishers such as La Campana, La Magrana, and others. And the third major group, Abacus, ultimately kept the Enciclopèdia publishing house. Now there are three powerful groups in a Catalan market that's enjoying a good moment, just like the Spanish one.
Periscope...
We started talking with the publishers, Aniol and Marta. They had grown a lot and now wanted to explore a new way to expand their catalog and give their authors opportunities, and we found this agreement where the two of them continue to run the publishing house. It's a bit like the Tusquets model when we bought it from Beatriz de Moura. They still have their catalog, they still buy authors, and the same publisher...
Young people are reading more and more, thanks to romance and other genres.
Alex Garcia / OwnIf they have the same independence, what does the group contribute?
As Riccardo Cavallero said, independence comes from resources. Periscopi has absolute freedom to contract whatever it wants and can use the group's resources.
The Catalan market is very small compared to the Spanish-speaking market worldwide, which you dominate...
Well, Basque is even smaller. The Catalan market is the second largest in Spain, but by a long way, about 15 times smaller.
This means that independent publishers, unlike those in Castile, are more precarious.
Well, the precariousness... in the end, the positive thing about this sector is that there are no barriers to entry. I mean, tomorrow you want to start a publishing house and you can do it from home, with your partner. You go talk to some agents and they'll sell you titles, you go to the distributor, the printer... And, when you start a very small publishing house, if you start to grow and things go well, there's no problem. But things aren't always linear, and sometimes things don't go so well. You can have a bad year, and at that moment you start to suffer. If you have to pay six or eight salaries every month, you get anxious... I think Aniol and Marta reflected on this: at Planeta, we'll be more protected, we'll be able to continue doing our things, and we'll have more opportunities to help our authors grow.
Where can the world of books expand?
Digital formats, including ebooks and audiobooks, account for less than 7% of the market. Printed books represent 93%, and, as we always say, the big revolution is e-commerce, online home sales, which currently accounts for just over 23% of the market in Spain. There's a certain stagnation in ebooks, but audiobooks are also experiencing a certain boom, which will continue because Spotify is now entering the market, with a model similar to its US and French counterparts. We think digital formats will still grow. How much? I don't know; I don't think they'll exceed 20% in five years.
Audiobooks will grow; Spotify is about to enter Spain, as it did in the US.
And at the editorial line level?
Right now, the romance genre is very popular, a mix of fantasy and romance, aimed at people between 15 and 30 years old, who were traditionally the least book-reading audience. And now it turns out that, especially among women, they are the most frequently read audience. 83% of girls between 15 and 30 read regularly, more than once a week. That's a lot. We're not entirely aware of it, but it's partly due to the influence of social media, which makes books fashionable. An analysis of the European book market from 2019 to 2024 has been published, and the Spanish market has grown the most, followed by the Portuguese market. The Spanish market has grown by 34%, and the Portuguese market by 28%. Outside, they talk about the Spanish miracle.
And how is that?
In terms of the population, the segment that has changed their reading habits the most is people between 15 and 30 years old, and the lines that have clearly contributed the most have been fiction, young adult fiction, fantasy, and romance. I think that's what has given us the edge.
In America, people read a lot more non-fiction, right?
George Steiner said that Europe is a land of fiction because, having suffered so many wars, people seek escape in literature. And, on the other hand, the American and Latin American world is a world where people invest in themselves; what they want is to learn, educate themselves, and advance professionally. So, non-fiction and self-help are much more important than here. And here, literature rules. Or poetry. The great country that reads poetry is Portugal. And why? Well, it must have to do with its character... I like to read poetry, but I can't do it at any time. I need very specific conditions; I have to be very quiet, in a place without cars...
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