Book Festival marred by absence of Merlin, as rising costs hurt industry

One of Malta’s leading publishers and trailblazers for the publication and design of the modern Maltese novel, Merlin Books, will not be participating in this year’s edition of the Malta Book Festival.

It is surely a clear indication of the state of the national book industry, that the colourful swirl of Merlin’s bookshelves will be missing from the annual festival.

Publisher Chris Gruppetta, one of the most active voices in the industry, spells out the truth bluntly – the Maltese book industry is reeling from a hike in printing costs due to the inflation that has plagued so many sectors of the economy.

“It was a decision purely based on costings. Between the much higher cost of producing books – due to how paper costs shot up – and the higher cost of sourcing our stand... literally, the materials for building it, which due to current inflation increased significantly, and the drop in book sales this year, we calculated it didn’t make financial sense to take part and we would literally lose less money by not taking part than taking part,” Gruppetta told MaltaToday.

And while the National Book Council subsidises the actual rental of the floor space at the book festival, that is only a small part of the cost for publishers. For Merlin’s extensive display of books, the main cost is involved in the actual stands that the company builds itself.

This triple-whammy of costs sends a warning to other publishers, who in 2021 saw 18% less titles released than the pre-pandemic year of 2019. While new ISBNs issued to publishing entities increased slightly to reach 528, this was 16.5% less than the number of ISBNs issued in 2019.

The easing of the pandemic restrictions in 2021 resulted in a relative increase in revenue generated from in-store shopping, with revenue from brick-and-mortar sales climbed from a 59.5% to 67.9% year-on-year. In 2021, the total revenue generated from sales and licenses of trade and educational books was estimated at €3.6 million, an increase of 4.9% when compared to 2020.

Newspapers have been granted a subsidy to cover rising cost in paper, with €500,000 in financial assistance for newspaper publishers, who employ 66 journalists full-time together with several part-timers, and issue 14 different newspapers between them, published daily, weekly, and on Sundays.

Publishers are seriously concerned about the soaring cost of paper, with the cost of newsprint almost doubling over the past year. In the UK, publishers are lobbying the government for tax credits and ad revenue to protect their titles.

Newsprint in the UK was priced at around £360 pounds per ton in the first quarter of 2021; now the price has almost doubled to around £710. In the US, the price has risen by a similar percentage, to around $800 a ton.

As demand for paper declined over the last 20 to 30 years amid the digital revolution, paper mills across the world shut down. Then along came the COVID-19 pandemic, labour shortages and the supply chain blockage, and a sudden post-pandemic soar in demand for cardboard packages.

The situation leaves no choice to publishers but to either reduce the amount of pages they print, or increase their cover price.