The Planeta Prize accepted industry wisdom for years:

Beatriz Serrano and Paloma Sánchez-Garnica rule the world. That indicates industry trends.

Planeta’s annual prize recognises female authors’ importance in Spanish publishing. With its quirks, the Planeta is a good indicator of market trends, and it’s significant that Paloma Sánchez-Garnica won with ‘Victoria‘ and Beatriz Serrano was a finalist with ‘Fuego en la garganta‘ this year.

The details. This award has many nuances and even a malicious detail: For ‘Last Days in Berlin‘, Sánchez Garnica was a 2021 finalist. Carmen Mola, a female pseudonym used by three men, won that year. Sonsoles Ónega, a media-friendly woman, won last year, as did Luz Gabás the year before. This year, two women won. Around twenty women have won it since 1952.

Women writing more. The National Institute of Statistics’ 2022 Labour Force Survey shows more women than men are writers, journalists, and linguists. In 2022, women published 4,317 books in children’s literature and textbooks, compared to 3,378 by men.

More female readers… This year’s Reading Habits report shows that more women than men read in their free time across all age groups. The biggest gap is in the 25-34 age group, where women read 73.4% and men 55.9%. Women spent 68.6% of their free time reading, while men spent 59.3%. Female readers have increased by 5.3 percentage points and male readers by 4.5 percentage points since 2021.

…and more sales The perception that bookshop shelves and award ceremonies like the Planeta favour women (in the last five years, two out of three of the ten best-known literary and commercial awards have gone to women, compared to one in three in the previous period) is simple. According to readership statistics, women sell more. In 2021, El País reported that women wrote 42% of the top 50 books, but still accounted for 51% of sales. In 2020, women made up 35% of sales.

But they publish less. Women may appear to lead the Spanish literary industry, but the Ministry of Culture report from 2022 compared to 2021 shows otherwise. The ISBN for that year showed that 61.8% of the 66,371 titles registered in Spain were by men and 37.8% by women (the rest are collectively published or registered as works by institutions or entities).

Uneven publishing houses. In March, Infolibre counted the percentage of men and women in a few independent publishing houses, where equality should be sought. Carmen Peire browsed the catalogues of Acantilado (20%), Libros del Asteroide (10%), Candaya (30%), and Capitán Swing (30%).

Peire claims the work of women-focused publishers like Tránsito, Con M de Mujer, Editorial Huso, De Conatus, Páginas de espuma, Amor de madre, and ConTinta Me tienes.

South Korean Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, and the “curse” that plagues many winners is the most famous rumour. Some of them died or had their work damaged by the prize. This curse also affects publishing houses, another major literary industry player.

Cursed writers. There is no “curse” that haunts Nobel Prize winners, but many have had unusual endings. Harry Martinson, who won the award in 1974, committed suicide after the Swedish Academy was accused of cheating. It killed Albert Camus, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Pablo Neruda, Luigi Pirandello, and André Gide within seven years. Some authors, like Elfriede Jelinek and Herta Müller, dislike the Nobel Prize because it places them in the public eye and may lead to a lack of relevance (although Gabriel García Márquez has disproven this myth).

The other curse. Publishers of Nobel Prize winners also face a shadow unrelated to unsolved mysteries. They often follow a mundane and common curse: the laws of the market, with large publishers fattening their catalogues by chequebook and small ones fighting for a name that was virtually unknown a few days ago. Several notable examples exist.

Jon Fosse, De Conatus. De Conatus, a seven-year-old publishing house, took a chance on Jon Fosse, the 2023 winner. Despite their low sales, they published ‘Trilogy’ and the four ‘Septology’ volumes. On the same day as the Nobel Prize, Penguin Random House announced it would publish all of his narrative work. De Conatus had the rights to its catalogue for 10 years since its founding in 2017, but Random House’s move prevented it from growing.

Non-profit authors. In response to Penguin Random House’s announcement, Silvia Bardelás, an editor of De Conatus, stated that “it has been very difficult for us to bring [ Fosse ] to the public,” adding that “Fosse is not an author for Penguin, but the publishing market has decided so.” He will always write for an independent publisher.” This acquisition seems to be driven by editorial greed rather than a search for an author who fits each company’s publishing philosophy. The smaller ones always lose.

The Planeta Prize accepted industry wisdom for years:

Beatriz Serrano and Paloma Sánchez-Garnica rule the world. That indicates industry trends.

By ki0nk

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