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The Argentine government’s economic protectionism is thwarting the growth of e-book sales, experts at the La Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires, have said.
The 39th edition of Buenos Aires fair—one of the most important in the Spanish-speaking world which ended on the 13th May—was attended by a total of 1.1 million people, according to organisers. Visitors came from 20 countries and 460 publishers exhibited during the three-day professional programme, which started on 23rd April.
Sessions at designated digital and “future” zones were popular, said Daniel Benchimol, director of Argentine digital publications consultancy Proyecto451. But the Argentine e-book sector is lagging; its current share of the national book market is less than 1%, according to Proyecto451 figures.
A lack of e-readers and tablets is the main reason Argentina—a country that has traditionally embraced new technologies—is falling behind, said Benchimol, whose clients include Spanish publishing giants Grupo Planeta and Random House Mondadori. The short supply is a result of import restrictions imposed by the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. They are designed to promote national industry and mitigate Argentina’s shrinking trade surplus, but the Southern Cone nation has subsequently been accused of violating international trade rules. “There are practically no reading devices,” Benchimol said.
The few Argentines that have Kindle readers or tablets manufactured by US-based Apple bought them abroad, or paid a significant fee to get them through customs.
South Korea’s Samsung brand tablets, however, are available since they are assembled in Tierra del Fuego, a southern province where industry is being promoted. “But they are prohibitively expensive,” Benchimol said. The 10-inch Galaxy Note, for example, costs more than £530 (at the official exchange rate), or 4,300 Argentine Pesos.
The Argentine subsidiary of Spanish firm Grammata says it is currently the only company selling e-readers in Argentina. Around 30,000 of its Papyre readers have been sold since 2011. Consumers have access to Grammata’s digital library of 60,000 books, where sales are increasing by 300% a year, said Ignacio Falcone, the company’s operations manager. “The headlights of the book industry are pointing toward digital content,” he added.
But Grammata is now facing problems importing its new Papyre line, which is made in China. Bizarrely, it is looking into exporting wine in order to release the devices, held at customs. Some industries in Argentina have to match the value of their imports with exports. For example, last year, BMW Argentina exported rice in order to free up hundreds of its cars.
Aside from an unorthodox macroeconomic policy, there are other barriers to e-book growth in Argentina such as a lack of Spanish-language content—there are just 50,000 digital titles in Spanish, says Proyecto451—and a cash economy: many people in Argentina do not have bank cards to purchase over the internet.
Three big publishing houses—Planeta, Argentina-based Sudamericana and US-based Santillana—are now digitising all of their new titles, with smaller firms such as Czech–based Albatros following suit.
More than 26,000 new titles were registered in Argentina in 2012, a 4% drop from 2011, with 17% of those available as e-books, according to the Argentine Book Chamber (CAL).
But publishers need to do more than just digitise content, Benchimol said. “That’s just the first step. There need to be marketing strategies, but publishers here don’t see the profitability yet. Argentina is thoroughly rooted in paper books.”
A conference on digital platforms at the fair included an address by Pedro Huerta, director of Amazon’s Kindle content, in which he advised publishers on how to capitalise on the digital market. Experts at this conference predicted that e-book sales in Argentina will account for 6% of its book market in five years.