03. Commitments and future challenges Annual Report 2013 45 PRISA Ediciones The economic crisis in Spain has severely affected domestic sales and consumer spending and 2012 was a challenging year for PRISA Ediciones. Fortunately, our performance in the Americas has largely offset any decline in Spain. Geographic diversification, coupled with a catalog of authors of national and international renown, is of particular advantage at times like these. 2013 will certainly another difficult year in Spain, and the judgment, expertise and knowhow of our editorial teams will therefore prove crucial. We will maintain our philosophy of publishing quality works (in print and digital formats) within a range of genres and on a broad selection of subjects that offer our readers good reading experiences. We have an exciting editorial plan and great content to sell: indeed, this is the best support a publishers can provide to a hard-hit book industry. One of the major problems and challenges of the content industries is piracy. The viability of the sector is clearly at risk if books are available on the Internet at zero cost. Current unemployment and, in general, the reduced purchasing power of Spaniards is not conducive to creating a culture of respect for copyright and intellectual property. The Federation of Spanish Book Publishers estimated the cost of piracy at 300 million euros in 2012. Spain is the European country where the ratio between legally downloaded books and the number of devices in circulation is lowest. Faced with this grave threat to the entire sector, PRISA Ediciones is working to counteract its effects through three strategies: ƒƒ Ensure supply: we have digitized and made available all content, except those for which we have not yet negotiated rights. ƒƒ Finding a balance between a price that is reasonable for the author, publishers and booksellers while minimizing the potential for illegal downloading. ƒƒ Create mechanisms to raise awareness among the public so that they understand that piracy is a crime that undermines society. Although the e-book market does not account for more than 3 % of the total, being visible online and active in social networks is essential. We are committed to creating 100 % digital books and will continue to produce books in more sophisticated formats that offer the user a better reading experience and greater interactivity. Finally, we should note that the Internet does not merely serve to distribute our content but also enables us to identify authors and topics of interest to the public. Our editorial teams should therefore be always attentive to what’s happening in the online world. PRISA Noticias News organizations, and especially the print media, are witnessing a complete transformation of our production model, where innovation and new technologies are not merely a thing of the future, but are already a reality. During 2012, PRISA Noticias has continued its strategic focus on innovation and attention to new trends in journalism. In May we launched El Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.es) the Spanish-language version of the popular U.S. news and views portal created by Arianna Huffington, and led by Montserrat Domínguez. 2012 also saw the successful conclusion of the multimedia integration of the newsroom, guided by the digital first policy (ie news goes on the Internet first). There was increased focus on the International section covering Latin America and an independent newsroom was set up in Mexico, which works in tandem with Madrid. The sports daily As this year launched its digital version in English. A newspaper must remain in an ongoing process of transformation, taking into account technological and social changes. The economic crisis is impacting heavily on the approach to news, and PRISA publications -especially El País and Cinco Días due to the nature of their contents- are now devoting much of their space to reflect the difficulties faced by the most disadvantaged in society.
PRISA Annual Report 2013
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