Mapping Brazil - Literature: Books & Reading and Where Is Our literature?

Books and reading
According to the third and latest Retrato da Leitura no Brasil (“Portrait of Reading in Brazil”) produced by Instituto Pró-Livro in 2011, the average Brazilian reads just two whole books a year. This survey shows that Brazil had 88.2 million readers in 2011, a 9.1% drop compared to the 2007 figure of 95.6 million in a period when the population grew by 2.9%.

People often complain that books are expensive in Brazil. However, the same survey found that price was number 13 in the list of reasons people gave for not reading as much as they used to, being mentioned by just 2% of the respondents. Lack of interest came in top (78%), followed by shortage of time (50%). The survey also found that 85% of the people would rather spend their free time watching television than reading books, while 52% prefer listening to music or the radio. Reading came in at seventh place, being expressed as a leisure option by just 28% of the respondents. However, 49% of the interviewees reported that they read more than before, while in 2007 this figure was 40%, which means an extra five million readers.

Painel das Vendas de Livros do Brasil, a survey of book sales in the country updated in April 2015 by Nielsen and the National Union of Book Publishers (Sindicato Nacional dos Editores de Livros, SNEL), showed that between January and March there was a real drop of around 5% in revenues, even though bookshop sales grew by 3% in volume compared with the same period of 2014.

The scenario is not clear, the problems are many, and the statistics tend to raise more questions than they answer. Retratos da leitura no Brasil (available for download from the Instituto Pró-Livro website), edited by Zoara Failla, is an important publication for divulging these results, as well as essays by specialists keen to find ways of bridging the reading gap in Brazil.

Where is our literature?
While readership figures may be low, the number of fairs, festivals and biennials has grown in recent years and is still on the rise. The Ministry of Culture listed 257 events of the kind in 2013. Meanwhile, organisers, industry specialists from the area and press surveys indicate that there should be more events in 2015 than the 320 held in 2014, according to O Globo newspaper. The Ribeirão Preto National Book Fair, for instance, attracted around 450,000 people in 2014.

Events of this kind are not just held in the biggest cities. In fact, more and more are being held in smaller cities and towns, which are adding debates with writers to their cultural, educational and tourism offer. Curiously, some of these towns do not even have a bookshop or public library.

All this begs some questions on both sides of the argument. To those who believe that literary events contribute to the effort to build a larger readership, the question is: do fairs, festivals and biennials really serve this purpose? Meanwhile, there are those who argue that the job of encouraging more reading should be down to other spheres of society – schools, universities, governments, etc. – and that literary festivals are no more than an endeavour to bolster the publishing industry. The discussion is only just beginning and is far from resolved. Nonetheless, the fact is that festivals and fairs do put literature, books and reading on the agenda.

The spread of literary events has been attributed to the success of the Paraty International Literary Festival (FLIP), which will be held for the 13^th time in 2015. It has played host to foreign authors of the calibre of Salman Rushdie, Michel Houellebecq, Christopher Hitchens, Isabel Allende, Cees Nooteboom, J. M. Coetzee, Orhan Pamuk, Ian McEwan, Robert Crumb and many others, who have discussed their ideas alongside Brazilian writers from different generations at different stages of their careers.

One way or another, the last decade has witnessed the increasing consolidation and maturing of the publishing market. A steady flow of literature is constantly being produced, and new writers of quality are emerging, confirming the trend already identified in previous years. If we add to this the growing number of events, awards, electronic media (websites, blogs, social networks, etc.) and publications, it is surely the case that the number of people who live from their writing or ramifications thereof (not just book sales, but also groups, workshops, lessons, awards, etc.) is on the rise.

Interestingly, literature is hardly seen in Brazilian newspapers. Literary supplements have all but disappeared or are shrinking in size, and art and literature magazines are losing ground; Editora Abril brought out the last edition of its art magazine, Bravo!, in 2013. One survivor is Cult, which celebrates its 18^th anniversary on the nation’s newsstands in 2015. Basically, the strength of Brazil’s literature and the size of its publishing market are not reflected in the press, and the country has no literary magazine to compare with Le Magazine Littéraire or the New York Review of Books.

National and international fairs, government programmes to support the production, marketing, translation and acquisition of books, and festivals and awards of different kinds are all designed to achieve multiple goals, but their effectiveness cannot yet be measured fairly. Even so, it is logical that the effects for the publishing industry and book trade are always positive, albeit seasonal. For writers, these incentives effectively contribute to their professional development, which is something relatively recent in Brazil.

The underlying problem is that for literature to be supported on a more long-term basis, steps must be taken that go beyond marketing campaigns for specific books or “in vogue” authors. It is no surprise that many commercial successes only last as long as the event where they are marketed, having no impact on the general public that does not visit book fairs, festivals and biennials. We need to wait longer before we can appraise the results of other actions that are expected to yield appreciable results only in the mid and long term.

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