BOOKS-BRAZIL: Publishers Benefit from Globalisation

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 16 1996 (IPS) - Though literature still is very much part of a nation’s heritage, the actual book making is becoming more and more internationalised.

Brazilian publishers for example, are using printers in Colombia, Chile, Europe and others as far afield as Singapore or China in order to cut costs and take advantage of international tax relief.

There is a permanent search for lower prices for better quality, and international publishing agreements benefit from tariff relief on books as cultural products, explained Sergio Machado, owner of the Record publishing company in Rio de Janeiro.

The Brazilian graphics industry is especially uncompetitive when it comes to book binding and special print runs, where lots of high resolution colour is needed or unconventional formats are used. Paper here is relatively expensive as well.

Many other countries offer a higher quality product for a lower price, according to Machado.

For example, the Record company has worked with the Spanish Altaya in two large publishing projects on books produced in both countries. The first was a print run of 100 titles from the ‘Masters of Contemporary Literature’, released at a rate of one per week and sold on newspaper stands.

Authors of the novels published in this series include Brazilian writer Jorge Amado, Colombian Nobel-prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Czech Milan Kundera. The hardback copies were sold at prices between eight and ten dollars.

Had the books been published in Brazil alone, they would have cost almost five times as much.

The low price of this series was made possible by the size of the print run, as 120,000 copies of the first book were sold, with the second free as an introductory offer.

The copies were printed in Spain on lightweight paper, and this in turn reduced the transport costs.

The print runs reduce with each new title, with 39 books so far, but the quantities produced are still far above the normal Brazilian print run of 3,000 copies.

The total cost of each book in Spain is similar to what the book binding alone costs in Brazil, said Machado, and the difference in the paper price covered the transport costs.

“I have my own graphics department, but I have had to give in to the conditions offered by Spain,” said Machado.

The company is now working on a second project, the complete works of Agatha Christie, a total of 80 books, which will begin to be produced in August under a similar arrangement.

Co-editions have also cornered another section of the market, the high quality luxury books.

The La Ediouro publishing company, also from Rio de Janeiro, is working with partners in Germany, the United States, Italy and other nations on the ‘Lives and Works’ series of 60 internationally renowned great painters.

They are producing six books per year. This year’s selection covered Picasso, Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Renoir, Monet and Salvador Dali. The series is being coordinated by the British Paragon press, but is being printed in Italy with each partner sending the text they want printed in their language.

The common printing of the bulk of the book, with reproductions of paintings and photographs, means a total print run of between 100,000 and 120,000 copies, making the final cost cheaper.

La Ediouro has ordered 6,000 copies of each book for sale at a price of 13 dollars per copy – one fifth of the cost of a similar product made in Brazil.

Another planned project is the production of luxury books with large photographs of more than a hundred types of horses and dogs, coordinated by another British publisher, to be printed in Singapore.

The book will cost 30 dollars in Brazil, which is expensive in comparison with average income in the nation, but “imagine what it would be like at 150 dollars” – the production price in Brazil – said Cristiane Carvalho, La Ediouro press officer.

“A publisher cannot survive” without foreign production, she said.

Children’s books, with many coloured images and special formats, are also produced abroad, especially in Colombia where the government stimulates the publishing industry.