This report was published at Economist.com on Dec.10th 2011, this is a summary and the title is above.
Illiteracy and poverty once denied the pleasure of reading to many Latin Americans. That should no longer be the case: a quarter of Mexicans born before 1950 are officially classed illiterate but only 2% of those under 30. And less than a third of Latin Americans now live below the poverty line, compared with half in 1990. The newspaper business has taken note. Paid-for daily newspaper circulation in L. A. rose by 5% ( 21% in Brazil) between 2005 and 2009, according to the World Association of Newspaper and news publishers. In books, the picture is more mixed. Publishers are churning out more new titles than ever. Sales in Brazil, the biggest market are rising. Things are less bright in the Spanish-speaking countries. In Mexico and Argentina, L. A. `s second and third markets, books sales have been falling.
The stagnation has deeper roots. Headline statistics flatter the reading prowess of L. A. International tests show that almost half the region`s secondary-school pupils fall to reach the minimum acceptable level of litaracy, according to the OECD.
One answer is to make books more available. Mexico has 7,000 public libraries and 4,100 ¨reading rooms¨ in which volunteers are given a set of 100 books to lend at churches or workplaces. ¨We have to tell people that putting a book on the table is as important as putting bread on the table,¨ says Socorro Venegas from the sate cultural agency. Colombia, too has a large network of public libraries.
The small size of the market means that books have traditionally been sold like luxury goods in L.A. Spain has one bookshop for every 10,000 people. By contrast, Argentina has one for every 20,000. Brazil has one for every 50,000 and Mexico one for every 70,000. Other places are book deserts. That helps to explain the popularity of fairs. A fifth of Mexicans, but only a tenth of Brazilians, say these are where they get most of their books. Publishers explain the high price of books as a consequence of short print-runs and the high cost of imported paper. Absurdly, in Mexico the English version of ¨The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo¨, can be bought more cheaply than its Spanish version.
Technology has been slow to disrupt this low-volume, high-margin business. Internet bookselling has been hampered by relatively low levels of broadband penetration and poor postal services.
Amazon ( and its Kindle e-reader) has plans to enter Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
