Brazilian Literary Market Is Undergoing Transformation, Writers Say

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A market in transformation, with new potential consumers but a lack of strategies for the training of new readers, is how writers portray the Brazilian literary market.

The market includes professionals who are passionate about what they do. On the National Book Day, October 29th, Agência Brasil talked to authors and publishers.

“We all work with writing, with text, with forms of abstraction, we are all dreamers,” says Cláudia Rezende, author and editor at Página Editora, in Belo Horizonte (MG). “I greatly believe in literature, in the power of forming a fluent reader, [and] in the difference it makes in people’s lives,” she adds.

Cláudia published her first book this year, ‘Poli Escolhe’, based on children’s choice process. The release follows an effort already known to authors, to promote, to release the work, to distribute and sell it.

“There is a crisis in the market, we have publishers closing, bookstores struggling, but, on the other hand, we also have greater ease to publish. At the publishing house we get a lot of demand for publication”, she says.

According to her, small publishers, such as Página, are the ones who “are making dreams come true. Before, it was up to major publishing houses, but not now,” she says.

However, Cláudia points out that editorial competition is high, particularly with books printed at a low cost in other countries. “We don’t even target certain audiences because there’s no way to compete with two books at R$10 (US$2.50),” she says. The strategy has been to resort to greater quality, the search for works that reflect the ideas of each author.

Public notices and fundraisers

In addition to publishers, public notices and fundraising are alternatives, particularly for new authors. Author Sílvia Amélia de Araújo, from Cidade de Goiás (GO), resorted to both strategies. She already has published books and others are still on paper, almost ready to be released.

Sílvia published the book “No meio do caminho” (“Midway on our journey”) with resources from the Literature Edict of the Art and Culture Fund of the State of Goiás. The work, selling for R$15, includes stories of people who shared trips on public transports with her, who sat next to her and talked about life.

“I wrote the book for people with low levels of schooling, adults who have recently become literate or who have little schooling, who will not be able to read a thick book with small print, but who are also not interested in children’s books,” she says.

According to her, the public notice has made the work more accessible. “Brazilians still have very poor reading habits, but the value of reading is high in the country. People think it’s important to read, they think it’s valuable and they expect their children to be readers.”

“I think there’s room to work and, in this respect, public notices are important because they allow this kind of thing that I proposed, to distribute the books or to sell them very cheaply,” she says.

It is estimated that 44 percent of Brazilians are nonreaders, which means they have not read any books in the past three months, according to the latest survey of Retratos da Leitura no Brasil (“Portraits of Reading in Brazil”) by the Instituto Pró-Livro.

The author also secured funding, through an online fundraiser, to release two more books: ‘Album de histórias’ (“A story album”) and ‘Guia Casar Bonito’ (“How to marry well”). As she is pregnant, she intends to release a book before birth, scheduled for February, and another after that.

Despite the ongoing projects, Silvia says: “It’s hard to live on literature alone, on the sale of books alone, it’s very rare to find someone who lives on that alone. But it is possible to build a career around it. I give writing workshops, it’s something that gives me an income and is related to what I want to do”.

A scenario of transformation

For the executive director of the Brazilian Book Chamber (CBL), Fernanda Garcia, books in Brazil are undergoing transformations. The Retail Book Panel in Brazil, a survey by Nielsen Brazil and the National Union of Book Publishers (SNEL), shows a slight improvement of 0.96 percent in book sales between September and October 2019, compared to the same period last year.

In 2018, 2.9 million books were sold, between the start of September and the start of October; the figure was 3.0 million in 2019. In sales, the increase was 3.74 percent, from R$112.7 million to R$116.9 million.

“The survey this year showed a small growth for the first time, but the curve was up. We are happy with this,” says Fernanda. “Although it is not a recovery, it shows a scenario, a growth curve”.

Despite the growth in the month, this year, from January to October, 2019 is still below 2018. The number of books sold so far shows an accumulated drop of 10.26 percent and the value of book sales drops by 9.53 percent.

Fernanda mentions several changes in the purchase of literary works, such as the creation of several reading clubs, the development of audiobooks and digital books, the advance of independent and niche bookstores, while at the same time the undermining of large networks.

“Parallel to this, there is a generation that has been producing books in a different way, more connected to a specific type of public,” she says.

The director believes that in order for the reading habit to be preserved and for the book market to be sustained, the public authorities, in particular, need to work on training readers.

To this end, the CBL advocates the regulation of the National Reading and Writing Policy (PNLE), enacted by law last year.

Among other points, the policy aims at the universalization of the right of access to books, to reading, to writing, to literature and to libraries and, to that end, it provides for the training of personnel and the improvement of collections. “We strongly believe in books as a transformative element of society, of education, of the country,” she says.

National Book Day

The Brazilian National Book Day was established in honor of the founding of the National Library – the Real Biblioteca, at the time – officially inaugurated in Rio de Janeiro on October 29th, 1810.

Source: Agência Brasil