If you’re a bookstore lover, you must have noticed that in the past few months some of the biggest bookshops in Brazil have been shutting down. Fnac, for example, closed its last Brazilian unit in October 2018 and is not selling books online anymore. Livraria Cultura and Livraria Saraiva both made a request for judicial recovery and also closed some of their physical stores across the country.
Due to the population’s lack of reading habits, selling books in Brazil was never an easy task. Nowadays, with the rise of the e-books in the market, physical bookstores are dealing with more obstacles. Moreover, Amazon proved to be a powerful competitor. When it comes to prices Amazon is always ahead. Consumers usually prefer this company over other stores because of the promotions and discounts offered by Amazon. And, besides all that, the country is still facing a very severe economic crisis.
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There’s not a consensus on what exactly caused the decadence of the bookstores in Brazil and there’s not only one plausible answer to this question. Some people argue that the main reason actually is the mismanagement. Strategy mistakes were made and they couldn’t be repaired.
This issue also affects the editorial market. Saraiva and Cultura are the major retailers in the book market: they’re responsible for 40% of the revenues of the main publishing houses in Brazil. As a consequence, publisher owners are being forced to fire employees and reduce the number of releases.
But don’t freak out, bookstore lovers! This doesn’t mean that all the physical bookshops are going to disappear. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel: the smallest bookstores. It’s a model that has been working out in some places such as Argentina, France, Spain and Germany and could work in Brazil too. The Brazilian publishing industry needs to reinvent itself and specialists believe that this could be one good way out.