Book sales fall 2% and record first break since the pandemic

Segundo a Associação Portuguesa de Editores e Livreiros (APEL), between April and June this year, 3,260.088 books were sold, minus 17,869 (-1.9%) than in the homologous period last year.

These sales units were translated into a financial fit of EUR 47,251.783, minus EUR 431,294 (-1.8%) than in 2025, according to the data provided to APEL by Gfk, an independent entity auditing and counting book sales throughout the year.

The period to which these figures relate coincided with the Lisbon Book Fair, an event that is usually a market dynamizer, making this the largest growing quarter.

In the last four years, only 2023 had a lighter rise (around 2.3%), but coincided with a 3.9% increase in the average book price.

In the case of this quarter, there is no significant price increase that can justify this fall in sales, on the contrary, since the average book price has practically stabilised and has increased by only 0.1%.

Last year, between April and June, the sale of books rose almost 10% and had a financial fit of over 11%, compared to the previous year, in a period when the average book price had increased 1.2%.

This is the first time that there has been a fall in the sale of books since the pandemic, as since 2021 the market has shown sustained growth.

The data released today also show that in this second quarter, 2,085 new books were put on sale.

As for the points of sale, 70.7% of the books sold were disposed of by bookstores, while 29.3% were sold by hypermarkets. This is also reflected in sales values, since 79.2% of the total collected in the bookshop market were distributed among bookstores and 20.8% remained with hypermarkets.

By category, the most sought-after gender was children's literature, with the highest number of units sold – 36.7% of the total – at an average price of 11.49 euros, which contribute 29.1% to the total financial fit, below the revenue of fiction and nonfiction sales.

Secondly, in terms of units sold, fiction, with a market weight of 34.1%, at an average price of EUR 16.68 per book, achieving a value of 39.2% of total sales.

Nonfiction books represent 25.6% of the units sold in this period at an average price of EUR 17,36 and get 30.7% of the total sales value.

The least representative – campaigns and exclusive – contributed 3.6% in the number of units sold, 1% of the final value established, with the average price of these publications around 4.07 euros.

Earlier this month, during the presentation of the next edition of Book 2.0, which takes place in September, APEL president Miguel Pauseiro considered it necessary to call all government areas to get the book to go further, because the country “needs strategy for the book and literacy”.

At the time, Miguel Pauseiro recalled that Portugal presents the lowest levels of Europe in indicators such as literacy, the purchase of books and the number of specialized bookstores, warning that signs of reversal in reading and buying books at European level are beginning to appear, which is particularly worrying for the country.

“ We need to speed up, even more because there is an inflection in Europe,” he said, arguing that a trend towards retreat in Europe could have even more serious consequences in a market that is already part of a weaker position.