By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story describes the launch of Gato Sabido, Brazil’s first e-bookstore. And in addition, news has been coming fast and furious in recent months about the launches or impending launches of e-bookstores across the BRIC countries (Brazil, China, India, Russia). But the question remains to just what extent readers in those countries are willing to embrace …
Brazil's First E-bookstore Opens for Business
By Ricardo Costa RIO DE JANIERO: On December 15, Brazil’s first e-bookstore — Gato Sabido (Smart Cat) — opened for business, offering approximately 400 titles in Portuguese. “The Gato Sabido is going to work on every step of the e-book process, from conversion to sales,” says Carlos Eduardo Ernanny, company founder and CEO. The new company plans to offer 30,000 …
Buenos Aires Invites You to Read in the Streets
By Edward Nawotka Everyone knows that Buenos Aires is a good—no, great, book town—and has some 350 bookstore, or one for every 6,000 residents. What’s even better is that for one night a year the city hosts an annual Noche de las Librerias—Bookstore Night. Corrientes Avenue in the center of town is closed down for six hours, chairs and sofas …
Brazilian Publishers Still Growing Despite Global Recession
By Edward Nawotka Despite the general global economic downturn, Brazilian publishing has proven surprisingly resilient. For much of the past decade, the business has been growing at a steady clip, reaching $3.3 billion reals ($1.93 billion) in 2008—a rise of 9.71% over 2007. It is the eighth biggest book market in the world and the largest in South America, accounting …
Bonus Material: Suggest Your Favorite Brazilian Authors for Translation
By Edward Nawotka When visiting Brazil (read more about Brazilian publishing) it became clear that any mention of Paulo Coelho among book lovers was likely to elicit little more than an eye roll. Brazilians, it seems, have little patience with the fact that Coelho is, for many around the world, the one writer that immediately jumps to mind when one …
Reading Brazil
By Edward Nawotka RIO DE JANIERO: Last week’s news that Rio de Janiero will host the 2016 Summer Olympics raised cheers across South America, a continent that is sometimes misunderstood and often underestimated. The setting for an Olympic games could not be more stunning: the city abuts both the ocean and the forest, with roads cut through mountains that majestically …
Bonus Material: Penguin Brings Its Classics to Brazil
By Edward Nawotka Brazilian book publishing is full of surprises –- one of them being that many classics of Western literature have never been translated into Portuguese. Stephen Morrison, Associate Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Penguin Books in the United States saw the opportunity to bring his company’s long line of classics to this emerging market and last month penned a …
Global Trade Talk: Russia Over-Publishes, 1M Cool-er Sales, Brazil Book Fair Begins
By Hannah Johnson Publishing Trends reports that the Russian publishers are struggling, not only because of the economy, but also from the effects of over-publishing. Coping with bookstore returns and warehousing the unsold inventory, distributors are having trouble paying publishers, which financially impacts agents and authors as well. The growth of foreign investments in Russia’s publishing sector could mean a …
Global Trade Talk: Author Advances Suffer in the UK; Frankfurt’s Biz Survey
By Edward Nawotka Publishers are cutting author advances by as much as 80% in the UK, reports Benedicte Page in The Bookseller. Clare Alexander of Aitken Alexander said: “For an established author who is not a bestseller, the advance may be down by as much as 50%, or books may not be being bought at all. The decline has been …
Weekly Recap: UKs Myebook, Caribbean Fiction, Tokyo Book Fair
Earlier this week Publishing Perspectives offered you stories you’re not likely to read anywhere else. If you missed any of them, please click on any of the links below. And then, if you like what you read, please forward the link to a friend and encourage them to sign up for our daily newsletter. (Read the recap in Chinese and …