After 2024’s big unit sales for books, the Mexican market, says Roberto Banchik, is working on transportation and distribution costs, and piracy, amid industry consolidation.
Roberto Banchik. Image: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial
….POSSIBLE PULL-QUOTE “Audiobooks have now surpassed ebooks for us. That’s very good news because audio is a completely different format. It opens the market to people who weren’t readers before. Still, digital overall is a very small portion of the Mexican market, less than 10 percent.” Roberto Banchik
By Talita Facchini | @talitafacchinii
‘There Are Fewer Players Today’
Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial director Roberto Banchik Rothschild in Mexico has worked in the book industry for 25 years, has attended around 20 editions of Frankfurter Buchmesse, and has served as led Penguin Random Mexico for nearly 15 years. He also sits on both the executive committee and the freedom to publish committee of the International Publishers Association (IPA).
Looking at his decade-and-a-half in the Mexican book industry, Banchik tells Publishing Perspectives, “There are really two sides: the textbook publishing industry and the trade book publishing industry, and they’ve developed in very different ways in Mexico.
“In trade books, there’s been a lot of consolidation, similar to what has happened internationally. For example, at Penguin Random House in Mexico, we’ve consolidated with other publishers, usually European ones, after mergers in Europe or England, and we’ve benefited from that.
“There are fewer players today, with the big ones like Penguin Random House and Planeta, and then smaller players. Many local Mexican publishers have had a very difficult time over the past 10 years adapting to new technologies, the changing political environment, and shifts in government policies. So for trade books, it’s consolidation, and for smaller local publishers it’s hardship.
“As for textbooks, they used to be a very strong and growing sector mainly because the government purchased large quantities of books at low prices. This kept the Mexican textbook market buoyant for a long time. But around seven years ago, when the new left-oriented government came in, they decided to stop working with private publishers and take over everything themselves. As a result, many textbook publishers struggled, and the market shrank dramatically Today, it’s only about 10 percent of what it used to be. In Mexico, 90 percent of the education market is public. So it’s been very challenging for textbook publishers.”
As for the more immediate time frame, “last year was probably a record year for unit sales of books in Mexico,” Banchik says. The market grew around 12 to 13 percent. This year, however, it has slowed down a lot.
“Looking at Nielsen data in September, in unit sales, the market grew just 2.6 percent. In terms of value, it grew 6.7 percent, but with 4-percent inflation, that means the growth comes from prices, not from units sold. So the market is basically flat.”
Meanwhile, other Latin American markets are showing different results, he says. “Colombia is growing at double digits with amazing numbers. Argentina was doing very well with new economic policies and the possibility of importing books.”
Sales Channels in the Post-Pandemic Era
For the most part, Banchik says, most physical bookstores in Mexico have recovered from the pandemic.
“Audiobooks have now surpassed ebooks for us. That’s very good news because audio is a completely different format. It opens the market to people who weren’t readers before. Still, digital overall is a very small portion of the Mexican market, less than 10 percent.”Roberto Banchik
“They had a really hard time in 2020 and 2021,” he says. “We were very worried about the future of physical bookstores, both chains and independents. But in the past two years, as the market started growing again, some bookstore chains have done a fantastic job—Gandhi, for example, which is probably the largest and most important bookstore chain in Mexico—has grown every year.
“Amazon also grew a lot,” he says, “and then flattened and has remained stable since then. Amazon is still very important in terms of physical book sales. Online sales of physical books grew significantly and now represent about 20 percent of the market. The other 80 percent of physical sales still happen in bookstores, which is very good news.”
In the online sphere, he says, Amazon is the biggest player in books. But some physical bookstores like Gandhi have strong online services, too, and there are completely online platforms—like Mercado Libre—which have grown a lot in Mexico.”
Online sales, Banchik says, are divided into physical books sold online, about 2o percent of the market, then ebooks and audiobooks, which are less than 10 percent of all sales, “probably closer to 8 percent.” Penguin Random House, he says, is “probably the largest audiobook publisher in Mexico right now, followed by Planeta and maybe Urano.”
He does point out that audiobooks “have now surpassed ebooks for us. That’s very good news because audio is a completely different format. It opens the market to people who weren’t readers before.” Still, he says, “Digital overall is a very small portion of the Mexican market, less than 10 percent. Business and nonfiction sell better in digital, he says, while fiction and children’s books are hardly produced in digital formats at all.
“So it’s still a very physical market,” Banchik says.
“What we do have in Mexico is a huge piracy problem,” he says, “both physical and digital. You find pirated books being sold outside metro stations and in informal street markets all over the city. Estimates suggest that four to six out of every 10 books sold are pirated, which is huge. In digital, it’s even harder to measure. I know from personal experience: I receive a lot of books through WhatsApp, both mine and from other publishers. It’s a very informal kind of piracy in which people don’t buy the books. They just share them.”
Current Challenges
In terms of today’s biggest challenges to the Mexican industry, Banchik says, “Paper price was a very big issue during the pandemic, but lately, this has not been a problem. The international price of paper has been going down for many months now, and the Mexican peso has revalued against the dollar, like most currencies. The problems are transportation and distribution costs, for two reasons.
“I believe Mexico has a big opportunity in exports. Our industry is strong, we have excellent publishers and book manufacturers, but we haven’t done what Spain has done to build a powerful export strategy.”Roberto Banchik
“First,” he says, “Mexico is a large country and not very well connected. It may take us six days to deliver from Mexico City to Tijuana, on the United States border. Second, the minimum wage in Mexico has been increasing significantly. This is a good thing socially—the government has pushed wages up a lot—but the problem is that inflation is around 4 percent, while minimum wage increases have been around 12 percent. This hits logistics and distribution jobs particularly hard. Costs go up faster than we can raise book prices, since we can only increase prices about 4 to 5 percent. So transportation and logistics have been more of an issue than paper.”
Banchik says that the recently levied United States tariffs on Mexico have not had an immediate impact on the Mexican book industry. “We do have a free trade agreement with the US,” he says. “Despite all of Donald Trump’s rhetoric, the agreement remains in place. He has imposed tariffs on specific items like aluminum and iron, but overall, there’s still free trade between Mexico and the United States. So the tariffs have had no impact on books.”
In terms of how he sees opportunities for growth, Banchik predicts that digital will keep growing. “I don’t really see a limit there. And within that, audiobooks are a format that will continue to expand.
“A surprising trend is fiction,” he says. “Mexico has traditionally been a very nonfiction market—around 50 percent of sales are nonfiction, 25 percent fiction, and about 5 percent children’s books outside the school segment. But in recent years, fiction has been growing faster than nonfiction. Audiobooks are growing. And I think children’s and especially young-adult books have a lot of potential too.
“Finally, I believe Mexico has a big opportunity in exports. Our industry is strong, we have excellent publishers and book manufacturers, but we haven’t done what Spain has done to build a powerful export strategy.
“Spain has been very smart in developing its local publishing industry while also expanding abroad. I think Mexico could do the same, and it’s something we’ve been discussing at the Mexican Chamber of Commerce. It’s not happening yet, but hopefully it will.”sa
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Mexican book publishing market is here, more on issues in the Latin American markets is here, and more on Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial is here. More on Frankfurter Buchmesse, its events and people, is here.
A version of this story originally appeared in our Publishing Perspectives 2025 Show Magazine, which was released on the opening day of the trade show, October 15.
If you couldn’t be with us in Frankfurt this year to pick up a print copy, be sure to download our PDF of the full magazine here.
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