Much has happened since the publication of While the City Sleeps by Frank Yerby. This was the foundational novel of the Planeta publishing house in 1949, a bestseller like many that would come in its 75 years of history. A label that started with a capital of 100,000 pesetas and has now become the main publishing group in Spain and Latin America, with more than 1,000 million copies sold and having added communication and training as business avenues.
With the good moment the book industry is experiencing, Planeta celebrates the anniversary with another "historic year," in the words of its president, José Creuheras, maintaining the growth of recent years after recovering in 2021 from the impact of the pandemic. The conglomerate closed 2023 with a turnover of 1,950 million euros, 8% more than in the previous year, when it earned 1,800 million euros. EBITDA stood at 375 million euros, 7% more than a year ago.
The debt of the Lara family's company has also improved, falling to 240 million euros, a figure that represents a ratio of 0.7% over operating profit. "We have a very solid position from an economic and financial point of view," Creuheras remarked, with the forecast that the current year will also be a record. For the moment, he rules out going public, an option that the conglomerate could consider if it needed to finance a large project that required raising a lot of funds.
Although books were the origin of the group, almost half of the income today comes from the communication division, formed by brands such as Antena 3, LaSexta, Onda Cero, Europa FM, and La Razón, being, along with DeAgostini, the reference shareholder of Atresmedia. The publishing business, which includes the La Casa del Libro bookstore chain and the Logista Libros distributor, represents 26% of the turnover, a percentage closely followed by the training arm, started in 2003 and now accounting for 24% of income, but with the forecast that it will gain more weight. With 22 centers and 140,000 students in the last academic year, Planeta Formación y Universidades, the leading private education group, will add a new 25,000 square meter university training campus in Madrid, on Paseo de la Castellana, which will complement those it has in Chamberí (7,000 square meters) and Tres Cantos (22,000 square meters).
If Planeta turns 75, its maximum exponent, the Planeta Award, reaches 73 years, with a prize of one million euros, an amount that even surpasses that of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Far behind are the 40,000 pesetas (just over 200 euros) that the first winner of this award received in 1952, the then unknown Juan José Mira with En la noche no hay caminos. Since then, 45.5 million winning copies have been sold, with names like Sonsoles Ónega, Luz Gabás, Carmen Mola, Eva García Saénz de Urturi, and Javier Cercas among the latest awardees.
The Planeta Award was created just three years after the birth of the publishing houseThe awards ceremony will be held once again at the MNAC and will be attended by the King and Queen. A total of 1,070 manuscripts have been submitted this 2024, slightly below last year's record of 1,129, among which crime novels and coming-of-age novels predominate.They have also highlighted, as Juan Eslava Galán, one of the jury members, underlined, plots about relationships established through the internet, as seen in one of the ten finalists, with the rebellion of a housewife through thesexting. Murders, beatings, disappearances, revenge, and corruption plots sneak in among the finalists, without forgetting historical episodes such as the Civil War, the slave-owning past, and the Cold War. The novel starring an SGAE detective promises.
We will have to wait until Tuesday night to find out which of the ten stories has won. For the first time, the winner will be chosen by a jury made up of more women than men, with the incorporation of writer Luz Gabás and professor Eva Giner after the deaths of Rosa Regàs and Fernando Delgado. In the Planeta betting pools, everything is always heard, but this year, someone has asked if television presenter Pablo Motos was going to win. Creuheras has only said that he is not aware that he has submitted an entry.