book

five eReaders on offer to devour novels on Book Day

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There are only two days left until the arrival of Book Day, so if you dare to make the leap to digital format or if you simply want to make a “wardrobe change” to renew the one you already have, today we are going to review the five best offers that we can find in these devices with brands such as Kindle or Kobo. Kobo Clara Color by 149 eurosa perfect reader for those looking for two things: color screen and a compact format. Kindle Paperwhite by 129 euros when you log in to MediaMarkt, Amazon’s best value eReader. PocketBook Verse Pro by 155.90 eurosa reader aimed primarily at those who want to use buttons to turn pages. Kobo Clara BW by 149 eurosa reader similar to the Clara Color, but with a black and white screen. PocketBook Era by 229 eurosa perfect reader for those looking for a large, color screen. Kindle Paperwhite (with advertising) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Kobo Clara Color He Kobo Clara Color It is perfect for those people looking for a color eReader without losing the portable format offered by a six inch screen. It allows you to read comics and magazines, as well as novels, manga and other types of books. But it also allows you to see illustrations and covers in color or underline dialogues with different colors to differentiate the characters in a book. And all this for 149 euros at MediaMarkt and other stores. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Kindle Paperwhite The eReader with the best quality-price ratio on Amazon is the Kindle Paperwhiteand it is basically because it offers performance like few other readers we have seen, its battery is the largest of the Amazon models (autonomy of up to 12 weeks), comes with a seven-inch screen and has 16 GB to store many books. In addition, it is waterproof. By 129 euros It is one of the best eReaders for reading in black and white. Of course, right now it is on sale for 129 eurosbut to see the discount you have to log in to MediaMarkt. Kindle Paperwhite (with advertising) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links PocketBook Verse Pro He PocketBook Verse Pro It is a very interesting eReader because it has several features. It is the ideal model if you are looking for a compact six-inch reader, but that allows the possibility of turning pages with the touch screen or through buttons, which in this case are located at the bottom. It’s also waterproof, comes with 16GB of storage, and allows you to access Dropbox. Its price in this case is 152.90 euros in El Corte Inglés. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Kobo Clara BW Do you like the Kobo Clara Color but you are only going to read in black and white? Well he Kobo Clara BW It’s perfect for you. In fact, It’s the one I usually recommend to friends and family.. It is essentially the same model, but instead of having a color screen, it comes with a black and white e-ink screen. It also has a six-inch panel, is waterproof and can play audiobooks. Its price on MediaMarkt is 149 eurosthe same one that the Kobo Clara Color has. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links PocketBook Era And if you are looking for a large model that also incorporates a color screen along with a button panel… here comes the PocketBook Eraan eReader that 229 euros It is most interesting. Its color screen is seven inches, the button panel in this case is located on the right side of the front, it comes with 32 GB of internal storage, is water resistant, has an audio output and allows access to Dropbox. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Rakuten Kobo, Amazon Kindle, PocketBook In Xataka | Which Kindle to buy: buying guide with recommendations to get it right with Amazon e-book readers In Xataka | The 25 best science fiction books

One piece of information perfectly summarizes the book bubble in Spain: 95% of those published do not recover costs

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The Spanish publishing sector closed 2025 with historic figures: 76 million printed books sold and a turnover that was close to 1,250 million euros. A record. The cold water came a few weeks later, at the annual booksellers’ conference, where it was certified that almost half of the titles available on the shelves had sold absolutely nothing. Who says so. The data was presented by CEGAL, the Spanish Confederation of Guilds and Associations of Booksellers, in theXXVII Congress of Bookstores held in Valencia in February 2026and has been extracted from LibriRed, the confederation’s own tool, which monitors in real time the final sales in more than 1,000 independent bookstores and chains throughout the country. The figure includes novels, essays and comics, both new releases and catalog contents, but (importantly, we are talking about physical bookstores) Amazon and school textbooks are excluded. The specific data. They are that revealing: 13.2% of the titles sell a copy throughout the year. 19.4% do not exceed ten. Only 4.5% of the books that reach bookstores reach 100 copies sold, a threshold that often does not even cover the costs of a launch. In other words, 95.5% of the books available in Spanish bookstores do not have the slightest economic impact on the publishing industry, not to mention that they are directly deficient. In Xataka If you hate justified text, we have good news: you’re most likely right You bill more, you sell the same. This is the paradox that the CgK consultancy put on the table with its Book Market Data 2025 report: The sector reached close to €1,250 million in turnover in 2025, 4% more than the previous year, which represents a historical record. However, total units sold rose just 0.2%, and novelty units sold on average 2% less per title than in 2024. Further analysis of the report They spoke of a statistical illusion typical of inflationary markets, because what has actually grown is the average price of the book. And this benefits the large groups, with catalogs in high rotation. Why is this happening? In its analysis of the Cedal report, El País collected statements from editors such as Enrique Redel, from Impedimenta, who affirms that there are titles that are not published to sell, but to take up space on the shelves, especially by large groups. The strategy is to publish many titles assuming that most will fail, hoping that one or two best sellers compensate for the losses of the rest. More than 90,000 books are published each year in Spain, about 240 newspapers, and theReturn rates range between 30% and 40%. It is a feverish cycle of full-speed rotation, paradoxically inconsistent with the calmest of cultural activities. {“videoId”:”x7zmsee”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”11 WEBSITES to DOWNLOAD FREE EBOOKS for your KINDLE Xataka TV”, “tag”:”Kindle”, “duration”:”321″} Who can afford it. The two large publishing groups, Penguin Random House and Planeta, in whose shadow it has been for decades the Spanish industry, and which account for more than 40% of the copies sold in bookstores. Fleeing this suffocating single direction are independent bookstores, which offer more than twice the variety of titles than the large chains: more than 525,000 titles compared to 229,633. In this way, visibility is concentrated in a few titles that rotate for a longer period of time, while the rest are buried in excessive catalogs. Some reasons. When looking for factors that exacerbate this situation (the two large groups can suffocate the market with their continuous rotation, but there must be more compelling reasons for so few sales of so many titles), CEGAL points to self-publishing: publishing has been democratized, but the reader’s attention has not. A book without a publisher behind it, without distribution, without promotion and without prior prescription is born practically invisible to the market, and it is normal that many of these launches do not sell anything. ¿AI provides tools to multiply these throws effortlessly? The percentages skyrocket exponentially. In Xataka They are not your imagination: the best-selling books are increasingly simpler and contain less elaborate sentences The difference with other cultural media is in the abundance of second chances. A film that does not perform in theaters can recover the investment in streaming, where consumption already rivals that of theaters. The book that does not sell in its first weeks on the shelf returns to the publisher, returns to bookstores in negligible quantities and is often physically destroyed after months languishing in warehouses. Perhaps finding new ways of dissemination and renewed lives for books would be the solution to this veritable overdose of books without readers. Header | Photo ofBree AnneinUnsplash (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news One piece of information perfectly summarizes the book bubble in Spain: 95% of those published do not recover costs was originally published in Xataka by John Tones .

In Tokyo there is a bookstore with only one book in the catalog. It has been open for ten years and works

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In an alley in the Ginza district of Tokyo, a small white-painted room houses what could be considered the most radical bookstore in the world. Morioka Shotenopened in May 2015 by Yoshiyuki Morioka, reverses the commercial logic of the book: while the Japanese publishing industry produces approximately 80,000 new titles each yearthis establishment only sells one, which is renewed every week. It is not performance. Morioka Shoten It is a business that works, selling multiple copies of a single work for six consecutive days. The interior is unusually bare for a bookstore (concrete walls, a piece of furniture used as a counter, a cable telephone) and serves as a canvas for displays inspired by the current book. It is a bit the absolute opposite of Amazon: from infinite offer to minimalism in choice. How it works. Each title remains on display for exactly six days, from Tuesday to Sunday, accompanied by artistic installations, objects or photographs related to its content. The space functions simultaneously as a gallery and a point of sale. The location of the project reinforces this symbolic dimension: the Suzuki Buildingbuilt in 1929 and protected as historic architecture, housed between the 1930s and the end of World War II the offices of Nippon Kobo, the publisher that produced the magazine ‘Nippon’, which many consider foundational for the modern Japanese publishing industry. The context. The opening of Morioka Shoten in 2015 comes at a critical time for the industry. Two decades earlier, in 1995, Amazon had begun operations, and the domino effect was inevitable: American independent bookstores went from more than 7,000 stores in 1994 to just 1,651 in 2009, a reduction of 76%. The physical bookstore model seemed obsolete given the speed of the Internet and recommendation algorithms. Morioka Shoten proposed just the opposite: concentration, deliberate scarcity and time to focus on a single work. The philosophy of issatsu, isshitsu. The Japanese expression issatsu, isshitsu It means “a room, a book.” For eight years, Yoshiyuki Morioka worked as an employee in second-hand bookstores in the Kanda neighborhood, a traditional bibliophile district in Tokyo. He later opened his own independent bookstore in Kayabacho, where he organized author presentations that multiplied sales. The question that it was done was: why maintain hundreds of works if the optimal experience was produced with just one? The Takram design studio developed the store’s visual identity based on a sketch by Morioka himself: a rhombus that condenses the double metaphor of the project, simultaneously representing an open book and a single room. The resurgence of indie. The proposal is part of a broader recovery of independent book trade. In 2015, a curious phenomenon occurred in the United States: American indie bookstores. They began to multiplyup to 49%. The study cited factors such as the feeling of community, the work of booksellers as curators and the capacity of bookstores as meeting points. The pandemic accelerated the trend: since 2020 The sector grew by 70%, in 2024, 323 new stores were inaugurated and in 2025, more than a hundred additional stores were opened in the first months of the year alone. Quality over quantity. The commercial results of the experiment confirm the viability of the model. Morioka Shoten has sold more than 2,000 works since its inauguration. The weekly catalog has ranged from comics by Tove Jansson to botanical photographs by Karl Blossfeldt, novels by Mimei Ogawa and short stories by Hans Christian Andersen, spanning fiction, non-fiction, manga and illustrated books. In an era that offers immediate access to millions of titles, abundance generates paralysis when it comes to decisions. From that point of view, Morioka’s radical limitation does not restrict, but liberates. In Xataka | The 24 most beautiful bookstores in the world

It is now possible to book a hotel stay on the Moon for $250,000. Building it is still the complicated part

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The Moon has returned to the center of the board and, this time, not only as a symbol of the past. The conversation is no longer just about missions and flags, but also what kind of activity could be sustained there if access becomes more frequent. On that horizon a broader idea begins to appear, that of a future lunar economy, with services and infrastructure yet to be invented. And among all these possibilities there is one that is disconcerting from the start: tourism, the promise of changing traditional vacations for a stay away from Earth. Landing the proposal. What has been put on the table is not a ticket or a travel date, but the option of entering into a process to reserve a future place in something that does not yet exist. GRU Space has opened an early access application program to participate in its first lunar missions, a pre-filter that, if passed, allows you to move to the deposit phase and maintain a position in the queue. There are still no assigned rooms or a closed calendar for guests, and the company presents the process as a way to select participants and check their ability to travel, not as a direct purchase of a stay on the Moon. Money rules. Booking is not cheap, nor is it definitive. The first step is a non-refundable $1,000 application fee. If the applicant is selected, GRU Space offers two deposit options, $250,000 or one million dollars, which can be recovered at any time from the first 30 days and which would be applied to the final price if the hotel accepts guests. That price, the company itself warns, has not yet been set and will probably exceed ten million dollars, a useful reminder that here the easy thing is to sign up and the difficult thing is to materialize the trip. A huge ambition with a minimal structure. GRU Space is, for now, a small company with a very big speech. Its founder, Skyler Chanrecently graduated from Berkeley and has explained that for much of 2025 he was practically the only full-time employee, a context that helps understand the early nature of this initiative. The company has secured seed funding, but its current scale does not correspond to that of a consolidated industrial organization. It rather fits a startup trying to turn a long-term vision into an executable plan. The Moon as a destination, not as a simple stop. In GRU Space’s approach there is a recurring idea: space transportation is necessary, but insufficient. The company defends that the bottleneck is in habitability, in having structures where people can stay without continually depending on the ship that took them there. Under this approach, the hotel is not presented only as a tourist whim, but as a use case that would force us to solve problems of daily life outside of Earth. His argument is that such learning, if it comes, would serve as a basis for broader infrastructures. The calendar that the company publishes is carefully staggered and full of conditionals. In 2026, it plans to review applications and profile the first participants, and then, in 2027, assign invitations linked to missions and stays through a selection mechanism and private bidding. The next milestone is in 2029, with the sending of a construction load to the lunar surface as a demonstration of preparation for subsequent phases. In its technical roadmap, the deployment of habitat and systems arrives in 2031 and the “first hotel”, as such, remains for 2032, leaving the tourist premiere for the end of a chain of steps that, on paper, should go well consecutively. From inflatable habitat to lunar construction. The project does not start with a permanent hotel, but with progressive technical demonstrations. GRU Space first proposes validating the deployment of inflatable structures and their behavior on the Moon, a way of testing without carrying the weight of a traditional construction from minute one. If that phase works, the next step would be to manufacture construction materials directly there, using the lunar soil itself as raw material, through geopolymer processes that, at least in their early stages, depend on activators brought from Earth. The idea is to reduce dependence on mass shipments and move towards more solid structures, designed for a more stable occupation. The target audience for GRU Space is not limited to the eccentric traveler with a huge bank account. In his approach, tourism acts as a catalyst for the broader economy, a way of introducing private clients into an environment dominated until now by state programs. The idea is that these first users help pay for infrastructure that can later be used for logistical, scientific or industrial activities. It is a bet to create demand where it does not yet exist, with the risk that the market will not materialize as they hope. The project leaves a clear feeling: the simple part is measuring interest and capturing early commitments, the complex part begins later. Turning an idea into functional infrastructure on the Moon means depending on launchers, technologies still in testing, and impeccable execution for years. In this context, talking about reserves serves to test the market, but it does not clear up the central doubts. The question is no longer whether there are people willing to pay, but whether everything else will arrive on time and as promised. Images | GRU Space In Xataka | We already have an official date for the United States’ return to the Moon: it is imminent and mired in a sea of ​​doubts

Make the “most mysterious book in the world” with dice and cards. How we are understanding the Voynich manuscript without deciphering a single line

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Voynich is an old acquaintance of this house: for years, we have been tracking (and gutting) each of the attempts to decipher the “most mysterious manuscript in the world.” They have all been unsuccessful and that includes, of course, the attempts to some of the sharpest minds of history. Now, however, we have a new idea. And, despite not solving absolutely anything, it sounds very good. What is the Voynich manuscript? Let’s start at the beginning: Between 1404 and 1438someone somewhere started writing a book in a language or code that no one has been able to decipher. A book that, since its rediscovery in 1912, has baffled everyone and especially cryptographers. Overall, this is an extraordinarily strange piece (full of illustrations of rare or non-existent plants, astrological symbols, strange creatures and naked women) about which we know only a handful of things. We know, for example, that it is a natural language (or a code related to a natural language) because complies with Zipf’s Lawan empirical regularity that only occurs in natural languages ​​and that describes the frequency of appearance of words. Invented languages ​​(especially languages ​​invented in the 15th century) do not comply. We have known this since the 60s, but little else. And people are still trying to figure it out? Yes, absolutely yes. The Voynichians are a group of people who are extremely passionate (and ‘insistent’) about their manuscript and, in fact, have members in almost every social strata in the wide world. An example is today’s protagonist. A few weeks ago, the magazine Cryptology public a job of Michael A. Greshko in which a new and very interesting idea was proposed. Greshko is a renowned science journalist, he is an editor at Science and has worked for media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Nature, Scientific American and National Geographic. He is someone who is risking part of his prestige on this, come on. And what does he propose? Greshko has exposed something called “Naibbe cipher”. Basically, it is an encryption system that allows languages ​​such as Italian or Latin to be transformed into a pseudo-writing that preserves properties of ‘voynichés’ (the ‘language’ of the manuscript). Respect, for example, things like glyph frequencies or word lengths. All this, with plausible cryptographic tools for the 15th century. And that’s precisely what’s interesting: Greshko doesn’t try to “read” the book; It attempts to demonstrate that, at that time and starting from a common language, a text similar to that of the manuscript could be constructed. How to make your own Voynich at home. According to the work of Cryptologiathe Naibbe method does things like break words into blocks (splits ‘gatto’ into ‘g’, ‘at’ and ‘to’), uses random systems (like dice or card rolls), and generates a homophonic cipher (ciphers specially designed to “counter the main deciphering tool for monoalphabetic substitutions, frequency analysis”). So, have we solved the problem? Not even close. As I said, Greshko has not deciphered the manuscript. He has simply looked for ways in which that manuscript could have been produced. For years, artificial intelligence algorithms have failed in the translation of the Voynich and, as the author explains, this may be because they do not know very well what to look for. Systems like Naibbe draw constructive possibilities that expand the options among which we can search. And in that sense, yes: Voynich is still much smarter than us. Although we don’t know for how long. Image | Gunnar Klack In Xataka | No, no “artificial intelligence” has deciphered the Voynich manuscript

Thousands of people bought the “romantasy” fashion book because it was cute. An unpleasant surprise awaited them.

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The consumerist desire that invades any area of ​​our lives also contaminates our hobbies. We are no longer talking about your identity being determined by your style when it comes to dressing or the music you listen to; Now, not missing the latest literary viral phenomenon in #Booktok also forms that identity that is built through what we consume. And if not tell everyone who bought ‘Catabasis‘, the author’s new novel RF Kuangfor its colorful edition and supposed themes related to a whole legion of readers, only to end up with a disappointment that leads them to abandon it after a few pages. Be aware of the latest news and let your private library be ground zero of your literary diogenes, full of those decorated songs so instagrammableis a new aspect of consumerism. The essential thing is not to search and select a book that suits your taste or surprises you, but to look for that pompous edition in trend on Tiktok. With the rise and increase in the number of readers has given way to a community on social networks that consumes books, mostly from a specific genrehe romanticasyand that follows like a mantra literary fashion of the month. As we have mentioned, marketing strategies can confuse the public and in order to attract the largest number of buyers, sometimes blur categories and genres that should be delimited. The fever for colored songs As a regular reader, it is healthy to get out of that nebula and inform yourself well about the reading you are going to do or, on the contrary, go with an open mind and let yourself go when starting those new pages. Because if you don’t, you can come to ‘Catábasis’ looking for a romance within an academic-fantastic environment and end up with your head full of equations, formulas and philosophical postulates. If we dive in reviews from ‘Catábasis’, we will find an alleged romance Dark Academia with the clichés of rivals to lovers (rivals to lovers), forced proximity (forced proximity) or one bed (the famous trope of rom-coms where the protagonists are forced to share a single bed). This would lead us to place our perception of the work in an erroneous perspective. The novel has been sold as if it were addressed to the general public, when It’s niche. Doctoral thesis, graphic description. RF Kuang is not your typical romance writer. In his previous books such as the ‘Poppy War’ trilogy (named by Time as one of ‘The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time‘) we find an epic fantasy of Asian inspiration; in ‘Babel’, a criticism of British imperialism; and in ‘Amarilla’, a satire on the publishing world. Perhaps it is from there that we have to establish the starting point of ‘Catábasis’. It may be that the public has been launched en masse to buy Kuang’s new novel infected by expectations, but just look at social networks to see that the outcome has been disappointing for not a few. The result of this phenomenon is curious because the criticisms of Kuang’s novel are based, for the most part, on issues that have little to do with its theme or the characters. It seemed that part of the book’s audience, directly, I didn’t know what he was facing. On this occasion the #Booktok community was a victim of “what goes” and an elegant and striking edition: but, dear readers, not everything has to be romance and romanticasy. This lucrative sales strategy that consists of labeling all the literary novelties under clichés that are associated with romance to attract more attention ends up being a double-edged sword for books like Kuang’s. hell is a campus In this new novel we find the story of two Cambridge doctoral students who, after the death of their thesis advisor, decide to travel to hell to look for him and obtain a letter of recommendation that will determine their professional future. And yes, we can accept the label Dark Academia since it has several of its elements, just as we also find a romance that floods and emerges throughout the story; but ‘Catabasis’ (a Greek term that refers to the descent to hell and subsequent exit from it), is about something else. RF Kuang, in essence, uses the underworld as MacGuffin to create a critique and a satire of the academic world through a raw and realistic vision. Sounds good, maybe not so good. The author shoots us with scenes in offices that cause more chills than Dante’s own inferno; while talking about toxic rivalries, directors who abuse their power, gender inequality and academic obsession with knowledge. And, despite fantasy and a system of magic based on logic and paradox, these unreal situations trigger a conversation and social criticism about the academy. While the protagonists Alice and Peter wander through the “eight circles of hell” we are immersed in numerous philosophical and mathematical elements. Dante, Piranesi, the myth of Orpheus or the scrolls of Hecate are part of the daily narrative. The book is full of mathematical theories, academic references, and terms that will make you stop several times to do a Google search. The fact that for some doctoral students hell is, literally, their own university, already makes us suspect that we are not facing a rivals to lovers to use; not even in the face of academic criticism of Ali Hazelwood style. ‘Catabasis’ is dense and requires active reading; In fact, we can say that it is an essay disguised as a novel that sometimes sacrifices the rhythm of the plot or its development in favor of the style and ideas it wants to convey. With an acidic, witty and harsh tone, Kuang uses Alice as the epicenter of the narrative. A character who is not designed to make you like him, but to embody the loss of health and identity caused by the pressure of his tutor and the academic environment. The message that we can filter is quite clear: Sartre said that … Read more

of cult fantasy writer to authentic “superstar” of the book

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There is no current fantasy author more celebrated and read than Brandon Sanderson, COSMERE CREATOR (The fictional universe where most of his epic fantasy books develop). The attendees know the latest edition of the Fantastic Literature Festival Celsius, held last week in Aviles: tails and agglomerations to get an author’s signature are not remembered with any other recent. And his secret, beyond the quality of his books, is to have turned his name into more than a literary seal: it is a registered trademark. What he has written. Brandon Sanderson He began his career in 2005 with the novel Easterris. Is mainly known for its aforementioned Shared Universe, The Cosmerewhere your most famous series takes place, ‘Born of the Bruma (Mistborn)‘, which has several ages: an initial trilogy and a second series that expands the world. Another emblematic saga is ‘The Archive of the Storms’, an ambitious decline that began in 2010 with ‘The Camino de los Reyes’. With a clear, simple and direct literary style, which facilitates the immersion without complications, his work is characterized by complex magic systems and multiple interconnected worlds. He has become famous for his ability to exhaustively plan your workswhich allows you to integrate multiple plots and universes. What makes it different. 42 million books sold. But in addition, the creation of the company that is responsible for managing its fantasy emporium. Sanderson began to transform his simple writer’s career to an entrepreneur with the creation of Dragonsteel Entertainment, in the late 2010 decade. Although since previous years he had considerable control over his works, with Dragonsteel formalized and expanded this business structure to handle all aspects of production, commercialization and multimedia expansion of his work, which has led him to have a team of around 70 people. This transition allowed him to move from a traditional editorial model to an independent and multifaceted one, controlling from the publication to merchandising and related events. What is Dragonsteel. It is not a traditional editorialbut a multidisciplinary company that covers both the editorial division and that of merchandising. That is, Sanderson controls from there not only his novels, but also games, collectible letters, luxury editions and other derived products that expand the universe of their books and, Eye, connect with their fans community. The queues in the last Celsius They were not only for the author to sign books, but to buy special editions and merchandising exclusive in a booth installed for this purpose. Virtually no author in the world can boast a deployment of these characteristics. But writes something Sanderson? Precisely. Thanks to the internal structure of Dragonsteel, Organized in different departments (including human resources, production, conceptual art and logistics operations, managed by his wife Emily Sanderson and an executive team), Sanderson can focus on writing without losing control over the entire editorial and commercial process. And among other things to develop with a meticulous and long -range vision for the cosmere universe. AND Plan everything in view. To do this, although the writing of the novels is yours, the great scale of its production is supported thanks to a team that helps you. Their assistants and collaborators do not write the books, but support tasks such as correction and planning. Sanderson wants Crowdfunding. This independence from the editorial wheel is what allows Sanderson to organize campaigns of Crowdfunding Very successful and that, although they have not made him completely distance from the traditional market, they have given him a notorious independence. For example, in 2022 he launched a campaign to Finance the publication of four secret novels That he had written during the pandemic, initially asking for a million dollars, but that raised more than 41.7 million dollars, becoming the most successful campaign in the history of Kickstarter. This financing model It allows Sanderson to accurately measure the real demand of his books and products derived, avoiding unnecessary risks and costs of traditional publication. This has led Dragonsteel to maintain a constant strategy of Crowdfunding To finance editions, projects and new releases. An independent author. Sanderson writes his books, yes, but controls his editorial model: a lifetime edition mixture (his books continue to be sold in airports, such as those of any other author of Best Sellers) and use of the possibilities that open roads such as the Crowdfunding. A RARE Av Among the fantasy authors: Brandon Sanderson is not only an author, but also a registered trademark by readers around the world. In Xataka | There is a book by Stephen King that is sold around 100 euros and I got it for five: the strange story of ‘rage’

In Spain a book is published every six minutes. It is the symptom of a bubble that does not stop inflating

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When talking about the health of the editorial industry in Spain, publication figures are usually used to justify the good condition that the book business lives. However, rapid accounts lead to thinking perhaps just the opposite: excess launches may be hypertrophy the bookstores, which are suffocated by a series of very uninjury side effects. How much is published? The Latest public data from the Ministry of Culture They speak of 92,000 books a year with ISBN, that is, more than 250 books a day. Every minute, six books. And that telling only the launches with legal deposit, that is, we do not count the self -edge (last year, it was around the three newspapers … By author) For platforms as widespread as Amazon. That do not count as part of the editorial cake but add thousands of potential titles per month to the mountain of slopes of the troubled readers. Success is what is sought. Why so much novelty? There are a number of reasons that make up a very complex ecosystem to explain this production overdose. On the one hand, it is an editorial strategy for compensate for the fall in sales by book: except Bestsellers And specific successes, the books sell less, the runs are lower and the publishers multiply their offer to cushion it. From there comes a constant publication and search of that new success that supplies the previous one. The fact that Increase global income Although the runs fall, it is proof that The strategy works. Oihan Iturbide, former Editor, counted in the jump that “the editorial industry looks more like a fast food chain than a restaurant with a good homemade menu: the key is in volume, not in quality.” Many are. On the other hand, there is the proliferation of new publishers: In 2024Spain had approximately 3,160 active publishers. It does not imply a very notable change with respect to previous years (comparable to 2016, and notoriously less than 3,564 of 2009, year with Spain in a very different economic context). Of these, only about 2,000 publishers launch more than 10 titles per year, and only 13 exceed 700 annual titles. Is it a note of diversity and vitality of the sector? Yes. But also of the enormous contrast between the large Spanish editorial groups (Planet and Penguin Random House, more Santillana in the educational field) and the rest: According to the Federation of the Editors Guildthree out of four books come from these groups. The distribution fish. This overproduction atmosphere (Rubén Hernández, by Errata Naturae, Talk about those 92,000 books per year “One third is returned to the darkness of the stores and is probably guillotine”) is contaminated with the complex distribution system in Spain. This is also Hernández: “The publisher publishes with a price (…) of 10 euros and it is sent to the distributor. The bookseller buys it with a discount close to 35%, from which he obtains his benefit, and pays 6.5 euros to the distributor, which stays 2 euros and pays the remaining 4.5 euros, that he does not pay him, but offers him a loan. “ The snowball continues to grow: “In turn, the distributor claims to the editor of his 4.5 euros, which he does not pay him, so he contracts a debt. And to reimburse it, the editor has no choice but to invest the 4.5 euros he has won (but he must) in another book that, after arriving at the bookseller, activates his credit, while the distributor enters another 2 euros. Book, the editor and the bookseller receive debts or credits. A vitiated system very similar to a bubble that continues to grow without brake. Are all bad news? No: the evidence that it is published too much allows publishers to realize that The situation can become unsustainable. Possible solutions to Very vicious system of returns in bookstores. The excess of supply is not bad in itself, unless it leads to overproduction and atibor the system until it is bursting. It is obvious that six books per minute are too many, but … who is the first to start with the cuts? Header | Photo of Pierre Bamin in Unspash In Xataka | Adult books are therapeutic. But behind there is a framework of demands, plagiarism and complaints

There is a whole adult book market. And they have their own ration of controversies, demands and plagiarism

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Did you know that it exists A whole coloring book market for adults? Well, that is just the upper part of the typical iceberg meme. Below there is a whole network of interest, millionaire contracts, low blows, Influencers come to more and editorial stamps that go completely unnoticed by the mainstream Cultural, but that move a lot of money. And this is the last controversy that has shaken the scene of this sprimer books coloring 20 semi -out. The panorama. Adult books arose as a global trend in the mid -2010, driven by the rise of products with anti -stress albotade and mindfulness (Do you remember the meditation apps, the Gratitude notebooksthe bombing of crafts and the cross point …?). In this context, many activities that until then had remained in the children’s sector of the market were reoriented. The puzzles, the games and the coloring books began to be tolerable for adults. And everyone dusted their cariocas boxes. Shift of the elderly. However, there were differences, of course: these coloring books adopted themes that had no childhood: mandalas, natural places, abstract art and, of course, the inevitable displays of NSFW illustrations. Quickly A scene emerged Around these books: Tiktokers and Youtubers that colored and gave advice to those who wanted to try at home. And of course, artists emerged who turned to create books with very diverse styles: Camilla d’Erico manga to the Kerby Rosanes dark fantasy. An entire industry. The subgenre facilitated. Among all this phenomenon highlighted a style with force: the ‘bold easy’, or books of extreme simplicity and that Anyone can face Without any experience in coloring. Topics voluntarily naif (although Not always), thick strokes, simple shapes, for pages that can literally color in five minutes. Of course, you can always raise the difficulty and give a complexity to these drawings with some skillbut the starting point was clear: everyone can color. Cocowyo enter. For 2019, the initial boom of adult books He had fadedor at least it did not reach those figures of 12 million books sold 2015. But this new trend of the Bold Easy He arrived to resurrect herand new authors and authors enshrined in this style: Mia Birchwood, Jade Summer, Vivi Tinta or Bobbie Goods. And, above all, Cocowy In Goodreadsfor example, it has 416 different books. Anonymous but successful. Cocowyo artists remain in anonymity despite the popularity of their social networks (more than 700,000 followers on Instagramfor example), and above all, despite having signed A millionaire contract with Penguin Random House in September last year. Of course, that firm multiplied its ubiquity (and more being a study without public names that can be fattened, license and derive indefinitely) and made Cocowyo almost the only ambassador to the line Bold Easy. Trajinar with the algorithm. And this is where the controversies begin, whose roots are traced until the times in which Cocowyo self -published. According to his most staunch critics, the study was an expert in detecting fashions and trends in the coloring book section and replied with very little dissimulation. For example, as Bookriot saidhis ‘Food, Drink & Sweets‘was very similar to ‘Food / snacks’ by Megan Mileyeven in the design and style of the cover. Nothing denouncing, but the similarities were very striking: Cocowyo also imitated the format and size of the book … and the term ‘blod & easy’, which transformed into ‘bold-easesy’. Suspicions of AI. It may be the appearance with just a few months apart from A couple of books with a death cuqui riding on the clouds, how did Bookriot also point out? It can be, but there did not end the controversy. Cocowyo’s neatness made them creditors of suspicions of use of AI for their illustrationssomething that has never been demonstrated. The opposition of the community He multiplied When Cocowyo recorded (not the use, but making them a registered trademark for legal purposes) a series of very generic terms and that affected the material that the competition was producing: “Bold and Easy Coloring Books”, “Cozy Spaces” and “Simple Art”, among many others. Goliath against David. The pressure of the other authors supplied its effect, already end of last year, Cocowyo abandoned its purpose of roying these terms. But complaints have not ceased: authors and fans have continued to protest because they consider that Cocowyo is not behaving as a little author competing against others legitimately. You are using the advantages that it provides to belong to a large multinational publishing house (armies of lawyers, tactics to bend the algorithm in social networks, burst the market with much cheaper books than those of its rivals) to present unfair competition. And that has nothing of Cozy nor of bold. Header | Cocowyo In Xataka | Can you read too many books a month? For many, there is a number from which it is already unsustainable

The Bible was always the most sacred book. The young Christians are filling it with post-ps, underlined and cuquis covers

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It was inevitable: the increase in young people making visible their membership in different creeds has led to absorption by religions, more needy than ever of new faithful, of many of their customs and ways of expressing themselves. One of the last: the personalized Bibles, an authentic fever that hides more than young faithful making a sacred book. Make your own Bible. An almost professional customizer as Kaylee Armbrustwhose content is entirely on religious issues, shared in the summer of 2024, in a video reproduced more than two million times, a series of ideas To take notes in the Bible: post-ps, underlined, margins, added pages, additional texts … an authentic codes and colors festival to enhance the reading of the sacred book of the Christian faithful. 11 tricks to dominate Tik tok #Biblestudy. Of course, it is not the only one: through hashtag #Biblestudywhich already has almost two million publications, you can find multiple faithful (the vast majority, women) painting their bibles and doing tutorials on how to do Personalized thematic indices or decorate them as if they were literally a school newspaper. The result is small works of art of obsessive thought. In Spanish they also abound, of course, with hashtags like #FEEATIVA, #Diariobiblico either #yopintomibiblia. Change faith. This personalization of the Bibles reflects a change in the relationship of people with faith: before, the sacred from the collective was venerated, now believers have more individual and personalized beliefs. That’s why Sacred objects They begin to customize towards the identity and aesthetics of each one. Of reminders of faith have become an exclusive expression of what each one believes. Digital, of course, It has a lot to do with this changeand obviously, the younger believers have been one of the Great drivers of this change. This is the youth of the Pope. You just have to take a looktags like #christiantiktokwith more than 22 million publications or #JOVENESCRISTIANOSits equivalent in Spanish, with almost five million, to understand to what extent young people have become one of the fundamental engines of this resurgence of religions in networks. We have talked about Hakuna phenomenon And how 85,000 people congregated in cyber, a number of audience worth competing with pop stars, or young nuns that From his convents They have become authentic Influencers. The next step is in the details: young Christians carrying their personality to everyday attitudes such as reading the Bible. And you get money. In addition to the undisputed rejuvenating touch that these activities have, that many of these young people see as a way to evangelize attractively, there is the possibility of doing business. The one of Journaling to dry It crosses, in Etsy, with the market of the Personalized Biblesmany of them with a very useful additive: wider margins with space to take notes. Leather covers abound and tapas orders are accepted with the client’s name, although the truth is that there are few pleasures such as fill with oneself The sacred book. Young people are getting something unpayable in the times that run, in which the number of Christians descends without brake (in Europe 17 million faithful has fallen In the last five years): Provide visibility in networks to which the Church cannot aspire. And the Cuquis Bibles are just one more proof that the sacred sometimes takes unusual ways to survive. Header | ETSY In Xataka | The silent phenomenon of Radio María: millions of listeners, emissions where the rest of the radios do not arrive, worldwide success

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