Leading book publishers being ‘killed’ by free state textbooks

Two of Malta’s leading book publishers have warned that the government’s move to produce and distribute free school textbooks is “killing” the private publishing industry and could lead to the extinction of Maltese-language books.

The education ministry is compiling teachers’ handouts and resources into books, complete with covers, illustrations and ISBN numbers, and offering them for free in schools and as downloadable PDF files.

Chris Gruppetta of Merlin Publishers and Joseph Mizzi of Midsea Books say this is “unfair competition” as schools, teachers and parents will choose them rather than the textbooks published in the private sector.

They told Times of Malta their publishing houses are experiencing a drop in textbook sales, which have long been used to subsidise the publication of novels, poetry and other local literature.

And, if this decline continues, the Maltese authors will soon find no publishing house that can afford to publish their books, they said.

‘We’re heading to oblivion’

Gruppetta said the Maltese publishing market was already in a precarious state and, without textbook sales, they would not have enough money to publish other literary works.

In general, the Maltese do not read a lot and those who do prefer the vast selection of books available in English as they have access to an almost limitless choice of books from the international market, he said.

This creates a significant problem for a market that is already small due to the country’s population size. This means the potential market for a Maltese-language book may be even smaller than the population would suggest.

“If we continue on this path, we are heading towards oblivion,” Gruppetta warned, adding the government’s new approach is a return to a 1980s model where the state was a direct competitor to private publishers.

While other cultural sectors receive government aid, the publishing industry not only gets no help but is now actively being undermined by the government, he said.

Mizzi, a veteran publisher of 55 years, echoed this sentiment.

“They’re killing us,” he said, accusing the government of publishing an even wider range of books, including history and Melitensia (books about Malta) that directly compete with private publishers.

The current education system seems to be pushing people away from reading, there are few real bookshops left and people increasingly live in small homes where they have less space to store books, he said.

“If we close down, there won’t be Maltese books in the shops anymore as it’s very expensive for authors to publish the books themselves,” he said, suggesting government should collaborate with publishers instead of competing with them.

“We earn just enough to get by.”

'No intention of harming publishers'

The Education Ministry said it values the work of publishers, but its priority will always be students’ best interests.

“God forbid that anyone thinks that we should prohibit an educator from sharing with his students class resources created for the benefit of his students,” a ministry spokesperson said.

“The ministry greatly values the important role of local publishers, who consistently produce high-standard textbooks. There is absolutely no intention to harm the publishing industry; on the contrary, the ministry believes there is space for both ministry-produced resources and privately published textbooks to coexist in a way that benefits students.”

The ministry said it had also implemented initiatives to support authors and publishers, including reducing the tax on book royalties to 7.5% and regularising compensation for rights holders. Additionally, students are given a €20 voucher to purchase books at the National Book Festival, a program representing an investment of €625,000.

In addition to resources provided in schools, the Ministry said it is supplying materials to families through programmes like Library at Home (Librerija fid-Dar) and Read at Home (Aqra d-Dar), which aim to help families build their own home libraries.

The ministry said it sees new opportunities for publishers and authors to grow in areas such as interactive books, and it is open to ongoing dialogue with the industry.

"The ministry is confident that a fair balance can be achieved which safeguards the interests of students while supporting the publishing sector and the Maltese literary scene,” it said.

Why do publishers have it so hard in Malta?

One of the bigger problems is economies of scale. The market is simply not big enough.

The fixed costs of publishing a book, such as editing, design, typesetting and marketing, are the same whether you print 500 copies or 50,000. In Malta, with a small potential readership, publishers can only print a small number of copies. This means those fixed costs are spread across very few books, making each individual book much more expensive to produce.

As a result, they cannot achieve the economies of scale that publishers in larger, monolingual countries take for granted. This limits sales and makes it difficult to turn a profit, even on successful titles.

This is why most genres are published at a loss and are subsidised by textbook sales, which are the only profitable area, according to Mizzi and Gruppetta. And when the government enters the market with free textbooks, it further disrupts this already fragile system.

Gruppetta said their critics sometimes argue that countries with a similar population to Malta’s, like Iceland, manage to sell enough books to sustain the industry. But people in Iceland enjoy reading more than people in Malta, he said, and, in Iceland, they generally read books in their native language. Malta’s bilingualism – with all its blessings – further exacerbates the problem for local publishers.

What do other countries do?

The issue highlights a long-standing international debate over how much a government should control the publishing industry in a democracy. In some countries, the state takes a central role while, in others, the market is left to private enterprise.

Countries like Hungary and Bangladesh have state-run institutions that act as the sole publishers and distributors of textbooks to ensure all students have access and to control curriculum content.

In countries like Japan and Finland, on the other hand, the government does not publish the books itself but maintains strong control over the process. In Japan, publishers must pass a rigorous government examination while, in Finland, the government funds the purchase of textbooks, which are then loaned to students.

On the other end of the spectrum, in countries like the US, UK and Germany, the state’s role is intentionally limited. It only sets curriculum standards and private publishers create a diverse range of textbooks that schools and teachers can choose from.