CULTURE-ARGENTINA: Books Languish Due to Readers’ Empty Pockets

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 5 2002 (IPS) - Books have traditionally been seen in Argentina as a driving force behind social ascent and a hallmark of the country’s relatively large middle class, but today book sales are suffering an acute crisis, mirroring the economic problems of the readers.

Publishing houses here are on the road to extinction, supplies are limited as a result of reduced imports, and the decline in sales – whether of new or used books – has been dramatic.

“When people do not have their basic needs met, it is not enough that a book is on sale at a good price,” Ecequiel Leder Kremer, president of the Argentine Chamber of Bookshops, told IPS.

Reading books “requires time, concentration and a level of tranquillity that today is very scarce in this country,” he added.

The decline in the book sector began several years ago, but in recent months the profound national socio-economic crisis seems to have pushed it into its death throes. Book sales plummeted 50 percent in January with respect to the same month in 2001, which was also a bad year for that market.

Some private schools, in preparation for the academic year that begins this week, organised used book fairs. “If the parents can’t even pay the monthly tuition, we can hardly expect them to buy new texts, so we’re being realistic,” Luis Díaz, director of Winter Garden school, told IPS.

But even used books have not escaped the general recession, says Marcelo Moreno, of the Rivadavia Park Book Fair in Buenos Aires. With its more than 100 sales booths, Moreno says it is the largest open-air used book market in the world.

“Even though our busy season begins in March and we can assume that more used books will be sold than new, the lack of money is such that readers and students are going to make arrangements either to borrow books from friends or get by without them,” Moreno said.

Books sales began to drop off in 1998, when the current cycle of economic recession began, but worsened in December, when the government imposed restrictions on the amount of cash that could be withdrawn from banks, and in January, due to the depreciation of the peso, Argentina’s national currency.

As far as used books, sales have fallen by at least 60 percent since October, according to the fair organiser. “There was one Sunday, normally the day of the week when we see most movement, and I sold just one book. We book sellers are pulling out our hair – this is a disaster.”

On another front, many of the new titles being imported remain without price tags because, with the fluctuations in the currency exchange market, the booksellers do not want to fix a price.

In 2000-2001, at least 250 bookshops closed their doors permanently, reported chamber president Leder, owner of Hernández bookshop on Corrientes Avenue in downtown Buenos Aires.

It was precisely that avenue which was once home to a panorama of bookshops and cafes where intellectuals and artists gathered for their ‘tertulias’ (discussion and debate among friends) until the wee hours.

Today, many of the booksellers along Corrientes, and in other neighbourhoods as well, cannot cover their basic operating costs – rent, taxes, wages. Furthermore, the publishing houses do not want to continue financing wholesale distribution because they believe there are too many retail outlets for the number of people still buying books.

The massive consumption of books corresponded with the boom in publishing begun in the 1940s, when Argentina became the leading producer of titles in Spanish in Latin America, and even surpassed Spain.

Spaniards with experience in the book business, exiled for political reasons during the Spanish Civil War – which ended with the victory of dictator Francisco Franco in 1939 – served as the engine for the book sector in Argentina at the time.

The book boom lasted until Argentina’s most recent dictatorship (1976-1983) dealt it a heavy blow. The military junta closed down publishers, banned the publication of certain titles and authors, and facilitated imports to such an extent that few domestic book companies survived the regime.

However, the restoration of democracy and the one-to-one parity of the peso with the dollar, a fixed rate established in 1991 and lifted last month, breathed life back into the sector. But with the recession that began four years ago, the conditions of production once again disintegrated and sales slumped.

The government freed up the currency market last month so that, with a depreciated peso, the conditions for economic production in general could improve. But the local publishing businesses are few and small, and they find it difficult to buy the publishing rights of authors whose names would guarantee that sales will justify the investment.

Currently, there is a 100-percent mark-up in the prices of some imported books, which means they are automatically excluded from a market in which unemployment and poverty are already high, and rising – and even potential buyers are limited in the cash they have on hand, due to the banking restrictions.

“It is possible that some local and some Spanish publishers will decide to produce books here, but we will never return to the way we were 30 years back,” said Leder. The big publishing houses purchase universal rights and then decide which titles are “sellable” and where it would be best to publish them, he said.

Given this outlook, booksellers reckon it is likely that the supply is going to be restricted, but Leder says it would not be such a bad thing. In the last 10 years, with the globalisation process expanding, there are an average of 900 new titles entering the commercial circuit each month.

“That forces us to remove some very good books, some that have taken the authors years of work, from the ‘recent release’ table,” and return them to the publishers, explained the businessman.

As such, it would not be a serious problem if the number of new titles is reduced, the real problem would be an eventual decline in quality, he said.

Planeta-Emecé publishing group has already announced that beginning in March it will produce 10 titles a month, instead of 14, and the editions will be limited to 3,000 to 5,000 copies.

New authors will have to wait for better times because the publishers will likely go with the tried and true: authors who are already popular with the reading public.

With the acceleration of the crisis that erupted in December, the practice of reading is itself in question. “People are too upset and they don’t have money to buy something to read. A book is not just an ordinary purchase, it requires a certain disposition, and I don’t know whether it still exists in Argentina today,” said Leder.