‘82% of the revenues are recurrently generated through owned content’

Elsa Esparbe Gener, RBA, Spain took the stage at the Indian Magazine Congress 2024 to decode ‘Crafting Quality Content - Leveraging Channels and Formats for Maximum Returns’.

Speaking of RBA, which is a publishing house in Spain, and its business, Gener highlighted how there’s always a battle between Collectibles and Magazines. Collectibles contribute to 50% of RBA’s business, while Magazines contribute 43% to the business. The rest 7% is brought in by Books. “We are especially strong in Europe & Latin America,” she mentioned.

Sharing the secret sauce to the business’ success, Gener said that the company invests millions into ‘evergreen content’, without really thinking about the format.

“When we identify that there is a niche, we analyse it very well by investing in market tests, focus groups etc., and then we produce the content. We will be relaunching or reproducing this content for years, when I say years it can be 20-25 years also,” she added.

Gener shared that RBA sells around half a million magazines worldwide, with a focus on the theme ‘history’.

“When we realised that the magazine was selling very well everywhere, we thought readers are readers at the end of the day. So why not do a collection that would sell at the Kiosks? So we invested more than 2 million euros in creating the National Geographic Historia collection,” she shared. RBA has launched the collection 27 times, translated it in 4 languages, and in 11 countries.

RBA also adapted books into ‘Bookazines’, and sold the same content (a little reduced) to the kiosks. “Readers are not the same. One wants a book, buys a book. One who wants to read an extra, buys the extra,” Gener said.

Lastly, she also highlighted how the same content can be turned into podcasts. “However, we are not monetising the podcast since it is very difficult, however the podcast does redirect our readers to the website, which brings money to us,” she added.

Additionally, RBA has invested over 85 million euros in editorial creation, fully amortising that, each year, forms the backbone of the new editorial production launches. 82% of the revenues are recurrently generated through owned content, Gener further shared. She also said that the royalties paid to third parties represent 1.7% of the total turnover compared to the sector average of 10%.

Throughout the year, RBA generates 20 new bookazines, 200 new books and 60000 pages.