/ARTS-ENTERTAINMENT/ LITERATURE-BRAZIL: Hopes for More Readers

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 11 1999 (IPS) - In a nation where each citizen reads an average of about two books a year, the sale of 1.2 million books at the Biennial Book Fair has sparked publishers’ hopes of a somewhat brighter future for book-reading in Brazil.

Of the 552,000 visitors to the fair, which ended here earlier this month, more than half were children and adolescents. The primary result of the fair was the promotion of reading among younger generations, according to Roberto Feith, director of the Biennial’s communication and owner of Objetivo publishing.

Although total book sales have doubled during the past two years, business owners and experts are not kidding themselves about the state of the Brazilian publishing market.

The average sale of a first edition book in Brazil is just 3,000 – about the same as Norway where the population is 4.4 million but Brazil has a population of 162 million, notes Luciana Villas-Boas, editor of Editorial Record publishing.

Brazilians read very little, just over two books per person per year, according to statistics compiled by the Booksellers Association. This is one-fifth the average of most people in Europe and about half the number of books read by Chileans.

Brazil sold a total of 341 million books in 1997, but 45 percent were educational books, the sale of which reflects educational demands, not the desire to read, according to the statistics.

The Brazilian government buys some 100 million books for distribution to the country’s 34 million primary school students.

Illiteracy is an important cause of the country’s low reading rate: 14.7 percent of Brazilians older than 15 are illiterate, of which 32 percent are considered functionally illiterate.

The main reason for low book sales, however, is poverty. The income of the vast majority of Brazilians means simply that books and newspapers are not included in the family budget.

This creates a vicious circle. Because there are so few readers, the number of books printed is low and prices increase, making them even more inaccessible to the poor.

As a result, books play the role of consolidating inequalities instead of promoting a democratic society.

A small economic and intellectual elite makes up the book market, according to Villas-Boas, a journalist who edited a literary supplement for many years before becoming a publishing editor. This privileged class, unaffected by the economic crisis, permits the growth of book publishing in Brazil – by five percent this year despite the economic recession, according to publishers’ predictions.

Even the cheapest book costs 10 US dollars and, as Villas-Boas, points out for the price of approximately 20 books, a Brazilian can buy a TV unit that will provide entertainment and information for many years.

The total cost of seven books is equivalent to the national minimum salary earned by 2.8 million workers and 12.2 million retirees and pensioners of the government’s social security system.

The scarcity of bookstores is another obstacle. There are just 600 in the entire country, according to publishers.

Some 90 percent of the 5,500 Brazilian municipalities do not even house one bookstore, according to the Booksellers Association. Rio de Janeiro, considered the country’s cultural capital, has 164 bookstores concentrated in 39 of the city’s 157 neighbourhoods.

The hope is that the children of today, whose greater desire to read has produced a boom in children’s literature, will broaden Brazil’s future book market, the Association says.