A Shifting Landscape in Publishing

There have been some major events in the past 20 years in the publishing world which have substantially affected it while proving how resilient the industry still is. In the following paragraphs I present some of them and their impact for the future of publishing.

Digital vs physical

There are two main digital formats in publishing nowadays: eBooks and audio books. In 2011, when I joined Random House, the question was what would be the relationship between paper and digital, 20/80? 50/50? When will paper books disappear? What we know now is that eBooks are just a different format of a book, almost in the same way that are hard cover books, trade paperbacks, pocket or mass market formats.

Audio books have changed the industry much more than eBooks. They have indeed expanded the market: not only current readers of books are attracted to them, but non-readers have become consumers of books in audio format. Audio has liberated consumers from two traditional aspects of reading. First, “reading” with audio has become a more passive activity than the actual act of reading. And second, audio has liberated consumers from having to sit down (or lie down) to read. You can listen to an audio book while walking the dog, exercising, gardening, cooking, and all sorts of other activities which are not reading.

Audio is now the fastest growing category in the industry, and publishers are investing in audio rights, studios and incorporating talent into production. This is certainly very new in the long history of publishing. It will not substitute paper or eBooks; it will coexist with them and open-up content to whole new audiences who prefer the very old tradition of orality. These are indeed great news for authors, publishers and consumers of books.

Online physical sales vs brick and mortar channels

Another mayor tectonic shift in the industry came not from book formats as such but from the way they can be sold. The rise of ecommerce and online sales of paper books has been a mayor development for the industry. Amazon did revolutionize the way we buy everything, beginning with books. Online sales channels have liberated consumers from having to actively move and search for books in physical stores. There was a time, some ten years ago, when owning a bookstore and being a bookseller seemed a perilous profession. Whole books store chains collapsed or seemed to be on the verge of bankruptcy. The debate then was like the one between paper and digital: will bookstores survive digital or disappear in the near future? What will be the proportion of paper books sold through digital channels versus physical sales in shops?

Online seems to have stronger arguments in its favor: for example, it makes buying easier and immediate and provides availability of a vast, almost infinite number of titles, while brick and mortar shops have a limited store space; in many localities that do not have bookstores, online allows book buyers to have almost immediate access to books, etc. After many years and a pandemic in between, online did capture a vast amount of the book market distribution, in some places accounting for more than half of all sales. The US and the UK lead this trend. In countries such as Mexico and Spain ecommerce is also important as it accounts for some 15 to 20% of all sales. But brick and mortar bookstores have proven as resilient as paper books themselves.

Online shopping is great for buying backlist titles, but it is not so good for front list titles. What online does not have is the possibility of “finding” or coming across what you did not know you wanted; this is mostly the exclusive realm of physical bookstores. And people like to walk around bookstores and skim through the new book tables and category tables and remember they wanted something when they see it displayed. Online greatly increased book consumption and readership to the benefit of authors, publishers and book buyers. And brick and mortar bookstores not only did not disappear but are again on the rise as they have professionalized and have become many times the center of community gatherings. Again, good news.

Disintermediation of relationships in the industry

A fascinating indirect effect over publishing came from internet and social media. The publishing industry has many traditional embedded relationships: publishers with authors, agents, scouts, printing companies and bookstores. Internet and social media have altered most of these traditional relationships. But most notably there is one that did not really exist, that is, the relationship between publishers and end consumers. This was the exclusive realm of bookstores. Publishers generally did not know or were able to connect to individual book buyers or groups of them until internet and social media appeared.

Now publishers have the tools to connect to and analyze their real customers, not the intermediaries. We can now talk to them directly, listen to them, analyze their preferences, their habits and interest, we can ask them what they think of book covers, we can follow their consumption paths and shopping habits, we can “social” listen to them. Social media has become the most important channel for promoting books and it also fosters organic promotion. First Facebook, then Instagram and now TikTok have become the mayor source of book promotion, and digital marketing has become a two-way relationship. Social media data has changed the way we publish books: intuition is still there and remains a big part of how we publish, but data analysis has strongly been introduced and used in publishing. This has greatly expanded the categories in which we publish and has allowed the industry to grow almost continuously for many years.

Artificial Intelligence

Finally, Artificial Intelligence or AI is, of course, the newest tectonic shift that the publishing industry has experienced or is experiencing. AI today seems to be both an incredible threat to publishing as well as a great opportunity to improve efficiency and open unthinkable terrains. It is a huge threat to publishing because at the core of generative AI is AI model training and this strikes at the heart of publishing itself, which is copy rights. As big tech companies seek content to train their AI models, they are illegally using copy righted content while at the same time fighting hard to change the laws, rules and regulations regarding access to content. Publishing exists because of copy right laws which protect and remunerate the intellectual and creative work of authors. Were such rules and laws to disappear, human creative works will suffer deeply. Publishers and Publisher Associations are working hard to control the use of copyrighted content for AI model training and big tech is fighting hard to obtain unlimited access to all content for such purposes. We are at point where we do not know what rules, regulations and limitations will emerge. Europe is at the front line of this fight which is indeed a life-threatening situation for the publishing industry.

AI could potentially in time displace humans as authors, narrators, editors, translators and designers, among other professions. Legislation is indispensable to regulate it, but so is business principles. And some publishing houses are adopting basic principles in relation to AI which can transform it from threat to opportunity. In general terms, such business principles are, for example, first and outmost, respect for copyright laws; second, making sure that everything in publishing starts with a human and ends with a human; and third, guaranteeing absolute transparency in how and when AI is used in publishing processes and products. With these principles in mind, AI presents an amazing opportunity for publishers. It should not be a substitute for human work but an aide and companion to it in publishing activities such as text reading and proofreading, information gathering and processing, ideas for cover designs, translations, audio correction and production, work-flow processes and marketing ideas, etc. We are now at a point where publishers are experimenting with AI in most aspects of publishing activities. But again, this is an opportunity only if everything starts and ends with a human. We will see where this all goes. It’s both scary and exhilarating. I am very optimistic though, because books and publishing are very resilient and have been so for centuries and they will survive AI as well.

Publishing in convulse political times

At the heart of publishing is freedom of expression. Such freedom faces great threats around the world as governments and religious institutions pressure and impose limitations or outright censorship on authors and publishers. Publishing is severely restricted when these situations exist. Freedom to publish necessarily follows freedom of expression, and when the latter is attacked, the former suffers. One mayor problem in publishing we experience now-a-days is self-censorship. As authors and their ideas are attacked from established institutions such as governments, churches and private organizations, publishers may be tempted to avoid certain topics or to decide not to get into trouble. Although there are no laws restricting publishing and freedom of expression in places like Mexico, I can give you some extreme examples of threats to publish and the temptation for self-censorship in my country.

Penguin Random House in Mexico, and by extension in the US in Spanish, publishes many in-depth journalistic, non-fiction works regarding, among others, drug related violence, drug cartels and government corruption, abuse of power and influence trafficking. We are the publishers of Javier Valdéz. Javier was a journalist who investigated drug cartels in his home State of Sinaloa, famous for being the center of operations of Chapo Guzmán and Mayo Zambada. His focus was not so much on the macro side of the fight against drugs and cartels, but more on the micro tragedies and human aspects of drug related violence. Javier was assassinated for the articles he wrote and the books he published with us. After his murder, we decided to establish a prize with his name to promote journalistic works. The question in the back of the minds of both authors and publishers, however, is whether we should continue writing and publishing about these issues at the risk of being kidnapped or murdered, or should we just stop until better times arrive. Is this self-censorship? PRH has kept on publishing such works hand in hand with very brave journalists such as Anabel Hernández, who lives in a self-imposed exile due to the many threats she has received in the past. But is this the general situation with publishers or are authors and publishers deciding it is not worth to publish certain types of books, especially in non-fiction?

Another example relates to pressures not to publish certain books which come directly from government officials, private firms or cabinet ministers, and even criminals. We have not been exempted of threats to sue or promote lawsuits as a way of intimidating publishers and authors. In our case, we have faced such lawsuits and outright threats, for example, a phone advising not to publish such and such book or else we would be sued and brought down badly. We have continued to publish such works, but many other publishers cannot or rather not have such problems. Mexico is by no means the worst place in terms of non-institutional restrictions to publishing, although it is the country where more journalists are murdered, and their murders remain unresolved. Over 90 journalists have been murdered in Mexico in the past two government administrations.

Finally, a not so new phenomenon which is affecting authors and publishers more and more is of course restrictions to the freedom to read. This has become a major issue here in the US. To fulfil our mission, publishers need people to be free to read whatever they like. This freedom is also at the core of democracy. In May 1953, in response to McCarthyism, the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970 consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association of American Publishers (AAP), issued a bold and direct Freedom to Read Statement, which starts like this: “The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.” This, please note, was written in 1953, and it resonates terribly with the current situation in the US, both pertaining to English and Spanish language books. Book banning in American public libraries and schools is not an issue of the past but very much alive today. Publishers such as Penguin Random House are at the front of litigation against laws that restrict reading and will continue to do so because it is at the heart of our business, our mission and of democracy itself.

Let me finish with the question: does publishing and books still matter today? I can say that books and book publishing matter every bit as much today as they have always mattered. Publishing in turbulent times such as the ones we are living in is not easy, but publishers have the responsibility to connect the ideas of authors who should be free to express their diverse and even controversial views, to readers who should be free to read whatever is their fancy. Books entertain, educate, inform, transmit culture, foster the imagination, dissect realities. It is true that publishing has never been in a better place than now in terms of book sales and readership, but it is also true that publishing is being severely threatened by attacks to copy right laws and to the triad of freedoms described above.

Publishing is both a business and a cultural activity, and it carries with it a great responsibility. We need to keep publishing alive for the benefit of all, but we must work hard to protect the freedoms that sustain it and in turn our democracies.

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson from Unsplash

Roberto Banchik Rothschild is currently CEO of Penguin Random House in Mexico, with responsibilities over the Central American market and the Spanish Language market in the US. He is a member of the International Publishers Association Executive Committee and its Freedom to Publish Committee, based in Geneva. He was interview by Adriana Pacheco for Hablemos Escritoras https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxfPR1sFCHI in 2022.

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Posted: May 4, 2025 at 6:44 pm