Re: Chilling mystery: Why don't Mexicans read books?

[Ed Debevic]

On Monday, 21 Feb 2005 11:27:45 -0600, "Antimulticulture"
Antimult...@hotmail.com wrote:

>
>Chilling mystery: Why don't Mexicans read books?
>http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0216/p01s04-woam.html
>By Ken Bensinger
>February 16, 2005
>
>MEXICO CITY - Cristina Woolrich looks across the crowded cafe to the small
>bookshop she runs, and sighs. "We have the best poetry section in town and
>we're going to get rid of it," she says. "We're going to have to eliminate
>almost everything if we want to survive."
>
>For the past decade, The Pegaso bookstore, a cozy shrine to the printed
>word, has offered browsers free coffee, overstuffed leather sofas, and a
>wide-ranging literary selection. But now it's scaling back, ditching poetry
>and history, and keeping the few things that still sell - some novels and
>glossy art books. Pegaso, like many other Mexican bookstores, is on the
>verge of succumbing to a complicated crisis that threatens Mexico's book
>industry - one Ms. Woolrich says boils down to this: "Mexicans aren't
>reading."
>
>Competitive pressures in a country where 3,000 copies sold makes a
>bestseller have pushed 4 out of every 10 bookstores in Mexico out of
>business over the past 10 years, according to the Mexican Booksellers
>Association.
>
>Meanwhile, from 2001 to 2004, roughly 10 percent of all publishers have shut
>down. And despite myriad efforts to encourage reading and thus increase book
>buying, the crisis shows no sign of abating.
>
>Now, the desperate publishing industry has taken matters into its own hands.
>In the past month, a consortium of publishers, distributors, and bookstores
>has started a system of fixed prices. It's a radical - and possibly
>illegal - measure they hope will resuscitate the industry and transform
>Mexico into a nation of book lovers.
>
>"The fundamental problem is that there are few readers," says Jose Angel
>Quintanilla, president of the National Chamber of the Mexican Publishing
>Industry, which is holding meetings between publishers and booksellers to
>establish price controls. By boosting the number of bookstores and titles
>published, they aim to lower prices and increase reading. "There's no single
>thing that can instill this culture in Mexico. But a fixed price can help."
>
>Despite having three times the population of Argentina, Mexico produces
>about 2,000 fewer titles each year. There are roughly 500 bookstores in
>Mexico, which translates into one for every 200,000 Mexicans, compared to a
>ratio of one to 35,000 in the US and one to 12,000 in Spain, according to
>the Mexican Booksellers Association. A recent UNESCO study revealed that
>Mexicans read on average just over two books per year, while Swedes finish
>that many every month.
>
>The Mexican government has made great strides, reducing illiteracy to less
>than 8 percent, compared with around 20 percent two decades ago, placing it
>leagues ahead of Central American countries and even beyond Latin America's
>other economic powerhouse, Brazil. Yet it has had little success encouraging
>active reading.
>
>Reading-stimulation programs have mostly failed. An experimental library in
>the Mexico City subway last year was shuttered after most of the books were
>stolen.
>
>"Mexico simply has never had a culture favorable to reading," says Elsa
>Ramirez, a library-studies researcher at the National Autonomous University
>of Mexico.
>
>Which is why, says Ramon Cifuentes, director of book distributor Colofon,
>the publishing industry must do something.
>
>In the past five years, large bookstores have pushed for lower wholesale
>prices - in some cases demanding discounts of more than 60 percent - in
>return for bigger orders. With that purchasing leverage, big bookstores can
>undercut prices at small stores, driving them out of business. Publishers,
>meanwhile, artificially inflate wholesale prices to make up for the deep
>discounts the big stores demand. The result is a shrinking pool of
>bookstores offering fewer titles at a higher price.
>
>Moreover, price variations among bookstores can be huge. The new novel by
>Chilean-born author Roberto Bolaño, "2666," sells for 650 pesos ($58) at Un
>Lugar de la Mancha, an independent shop; at Gandhi, one of the largest
>chains, it can be had for 455 pesos ($40). But even that 43 percent savings
>is deceiving: In Argentina, with its larger concentration of readers, that
>same book can be had for the equivalent of $23.
>
>Price fixing, say proponents, would help reduce wholesale prices across the
>board. Currently, bestsellers are relatively cheap, but prices for less
>popular books are sky high.
>
>It's a system that's been successfully employed in a dozen countries in
>Europe, notably France and Spain, both of which suffered from bookstore
>closures before installing fixed prices. In both cases, the publishing
>industries enjoyed huge growth.
>
>"Fixed prices are the only thing that prevents small bookstores and
>publishers from disappearing. Without them, there would be no variety, no
>specialization," Alfonso Otero, director of Fuentetaja, a bookstore in
>Madrid, says by phone.
>
>But, some argue, the European countries already had a public predisposed to
>reading. "For the majority of Mexicans, bookstores are a completely alien
>place," says Jesus Anaya, editorial director at publishing house Grupo
>Planeta. Although more titles and lower prices would certainly appeal to
>current readers, he doubts they'll create new ones. "I'm not sure that
>waving a magic wand of fixed prices can bring this cadaver to life."
>
>Moreover, there is a serious question about the legality of industry-imposed
>fixed prices. Like the US, Mexico has antitrust laws to prevent price
>manipulation that hurt the consumer. Critics say it's anticompetitive.
>
>One frequently cited case is El Sotano, one of Mexico's largest bookstore
>chains, which has so far refused to stop asking for big wholesale discounts.
>As a result, several publishers say they've stopped selling to El Sotano,
>which declined to comment on the situation.
>
>In response to the legal questions, the publishing industry has written a
>fixed-price bill they hope to present to the Mexican Congress before April.
>Currently, editors and booksellers are making their case to key congressmen
>and senators.
>
>Congressman Jose Antonio Cabello, secretary of the Culture Committee,
>supports the bill, but says it'll have to pass the competition and economy
>committees before coming to a vote. "We'll have to push very hard for this
>to have a chance," he says, adding that just one dissenting voice from the
>publishing industry or a consumer group could skunk the bill. And it could
>be years before a vote occurs.
>
>Mexico's Federal Competition Commission, meanwhile, could halt industry
>efforts to establish fixed prices at any time.
>
>Still, many in the industry see no other option. "This isn't just an
>economic question. It's really a question of culture," says Henoc de
>Santiago, president of the Mexican Booksellers Association, which argues
>that the industry's woes are severe enough to threaten its long-term
>survival.
>
>"If we don't give books a certain degree of protection, bookstores will
>continue to disappear, prices will continue to rise. Without fixed prices,
>there may not be any more books to read."

....and here I thought it was because they're idiots