The Buenos Aires Book Fair closed its 50-year anniversary event on Monday with mixed results. 

While organizers and top publishers celebrated the record attendance and saw good sales numbers, most mid-sized and independent ones project final sales to be below last year’s — a reflection of an ongoing industry crisis.

Fair organizers described a “positive outcome” and presented record numbers in attendance. According to the official press release, there were 1,340,000 attendees in 2026, an 8% increase compared to last year. 

The country’s two top publishers, Grupo Planeta and Penguin Random House (PRH) reported around a 15% increase in book sales in comparison with the last fair. 

PRH’s increase was driven by women authors and children’s literature, with works by Samantha Schweblin, Selva Almada, and Agustina Bazterrica at the top. 

For Planeta, sales were reportedly pushed by dictatorship-related non-fiction, with Felipe Pigna’s 76 and María O’Donnell’s Montoneros topping the charts. 

Expectations and reality

Expectations before the fair were pretty low given the steep drop in book sales throughout the year — with bookshops reporting between 20 and 40% fall against 2025. Some mid-size publishers, however, told the........

© Buenos Aires Herald