Even though the book/publishing sector in Poland has been privatised shortly after the end of Comunism, the State used to subsidize it indirectly. However, this situation came to an end May 2011 with the raise of VAT from 0 to 5 %.
The number of publishing houses is high and is still growing what can be seen above in both numbers and trends.
Porter's Five Forces Model has been used to conduct a competitive analysis of the book/publishing sector in Poland. As it can be seen above, this sector is neither very attractive, nor unattractive.
The main macro-ambiental factors which affect or could affec the publishing industry worldwide and in Poland are the following:
-privatisation of the State publishing houses in countries where it hasn't happened yet --> In a private sector all that counts is revenue. Because of that mergers and bigger companies taking over smaller and less profitables ones happen on a regular basis.
-investments of multinational publishers on small markets --> The influx of foreign capital can stimulate general book sector development. In the same time, it can lead to one company gaining an extrastrong position and the competitors loosing market shares.
-poor ecomomic codition --> The non-ending global crisis and the fact that more and more people have to cut the cost whereever possible may lover the number of purchases books even more.
-campaigns against violation of copyrights --> Such campaigns may change people's attitude towards unauthorised copying of books. However, until the price of books, and especially of those academic ones, lowers significantly, people (especially students) will continue using photocopies.
-unfair share of revenue and modern technologies --> the fact that only about 5-10% of the price a book is sold for goes to its author will lead to more and more people choosing self-publishing. This trend will be further supported by development of modern technologies that make self-publishing easy.
-the rising of VAT from 0 to 5% starting from May 2011 in Poland --> It will result in an increase of book prices and in consequence, in an even lower level of reading in the future.
-slowly but growing popularity of audio- and e-books and e-book readers fast price drop --> Development of audio- and e-books and the fact that e-book readers are not as expensive as they were when for the first time introduced will affect the number of printed books sold.
-spelling reforms such as portuguese acordo ortografico for example --> The necesity of printing new book that will comply with new stimulates the market and broadens it as Portugues book will be now more willingly bought by Brazilian readers.
In spite of a big number or registered publishers, Polish book sector is characterised by high market concentration, as the market share of 200 largest publishers is 98%. Also the number of publishers that release more than 10 titles per year in 2007 and 2008 oscilated between 600-700, to decrease to 300 in 2009 according to the data of Polska Biblioteka Narodowa (Polish National Library).
As the data above shows (source: Polska Biblioteka Narodowa), the number of publishers with the annual turnover higher than 500 000 euro is relatively small. Also, this amount was reached only 3 years ago.
The number of entities in the groups of big and midium-sized pubishing houses and their corresponding market shares has been changing only slightly over the last years, while in case of small and inactive publishers, these numbers remained basically at the same level. (source: Polska Biblioteka Narodowa)
The main macro-ambiental factors which affect or could affec the publishing industry worldwide and in Poland are the following:
-privatisation of the State publishing houses in countries where it hasn't happened yet --> In a private sector all that counts is revenue. Because of that mergers and bigger companies taking over smaller and less profitables ones happen on a regular basis.
-investments of multinational publishers on small markets --> The influx of foreign capital can stimulate general book sector development. In the same time, it can lead to one company gaining an extrastrong position and the competitors loosing market shares.
-poor ecomomic codition --> The non-ending global crisis and the fact that more and more people have to cut the cost whereever possible may lover the number of purchases books even more.
-campaigns against violation of copyrights --> Such campaigns may change people's attitude towards unauthorised copying of books. However, until the price of books, and especially of those academic ones, lowers significantly, people (especially students) will continue using photocopies.
-unfair share of revenue and modern technologies --> the fact that only about 5-10% of the price a book is sold for goes to its author will lead to more and more people choosing self-publishing. This trend will be further supported by development of modern technologies that make self-publishing easy.
-the rising of VAT from 0 to 5% starting from May 2011 in Poland --> It will result in an increase of book prices and in consequence, in an even lower level of reading in the future.
-slowly but growing popularity of audio- and e-books and e-book readers fast price drop --> Development of audio- and e-books and the fact that e-book readers are not as expensive as they were when for the first time introduced will affect the number of printed books sold.
-spelling reforms such as portuguese acordo ortografico for example --> The necesity of printing new book that will comply with new stimulates the market and broadens it as Portugues book will be now more willingly bought by Brazilian readers.
