September 2009

Things get official on the third day of our trip to Brazil. Our group of journalists and our escorts from the Book Fair are guests of the Camara Brasileira do Livro (CBL), the Brazilian Chamber of Books, the organisation with publishing companies, book trade businesses, literary agents and authors as its members.

Wednesday, 16 September, Day Three:
From our hotel, it’s only about 20 minutes through the attractively located district of Pinheiros to the Camara offices. It’s one of the rare occasions when we walk somewhere, usually travelling on this trip by plane or minibus.

The CBL also organises the book fair in São Paulo every two years, whilst the Bienal do Livro in Rio is the responsibility of the partner association SNEL (Sindicato Nacional dos Editores de Livros) which primarily represents the national interests of the Brasilian book industry.

The generous breakfast and chats with the publishers taking part are followed by a crash course in the Brazilian book business. The difficulties of a market which reaches only about a seventh of the total population (approx. 25 million potential book buyers) are obvious. Proper book business only exists in the cities and big towns – a distribution network for books as we know it in Germany is still something the Brazilians can only wish for.

As well as its market activities, the Brazilian industry works with the support of the government on behalf of book distribution and to promote reading. The Plano Nacional do Livro e Leitura is exemplary in its work here, with José Castilho Marques Neto telling us about its projects and aims.

After lunch in the restaurant (fillet of beef with mange-tout peas and cassava puree) we visit the Editora Cançao Nova (or “New Song”), a publishing company for religious literature. Editora Cançao Nova is one of the media companies run by Cançao Nova, a Catholic Charismatic society founded in 1978, with operating bases in Brazil, Europe, Israel and the USA. It could be seen as having been set up as a Catholic answer to the strongly expanding Evangelical movement which is very popular in Brazil.

Publishing director Cristina Maria Negrao can be happy with the success of her publishing programme. Unlike colleagues in other publishing companies, she manages to distribute tens of thousands of copies of a good many (edification) titles. The magic word is direct sale. Representatives are out and about for Cançao Nova everywhere in the country, offering and selling books on the doorstep (the catalogue is entitled “Porta a Porta” – “Door to Door”). Ms Negrao explains the sales concept as follows: “In Brazil, there are five social strata: A, B, C, D and E. Whilst the fiction and academic publishing companies sell to A and B, we offer our books to C and D.” That does not mean the very poor and illiterate, but people with four to eight years of school education. Accordingly the books are kept in simple, easily understood language that does not ask too much of their readers.

First published at http://www.boersenblatt.net/340452/

 Brazil is not just the biggest country in South America, but also the continent’s biggest book market. Brazil’s biggest book fair, the Bienal do Livro, alternates annually between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. This year, around 600,000 visitors came to Rio between 10 and 20 September to the exhibition halls in the Barra da Tijuca, a young, up-and-coming district in the city of six million.

Tuesday, 15 September, Day Two:
At breakfast, we look out over the ocean. Our hotel is directly on the Atlantic, you can see the surf breaking on the beach. A group of well-built young men come into view: on early-morning run-and-jump training supervised by a woman. They’re probably lifeguards who have to keep fit and ready to go.

Today’s programme includes the Bienal do Livro. The bus gets us to the exhibition site in about 30 minutes, it feels like outside of town, but, as we find out, is actually in the same district. We have to get used to the greater distances.

Bustling throngs fill the three exhibition halls (”orange”, “green” and “blue”). At least half of all the visitors are classes of school children, brought in from all over the federal state of Rio de Janeiro – at the expense of the local authorities. So the young visitors also wear the t-shirts from their local government sponsors.

Our conversations are repeatedly interrupted by hysterical shrieks. There’s a sudden rush with the school children all dashing in one direction. Thalita, their idol, suddenly appears in their midst. Thalita Rebouças, the bestselling author whose self-help books have won the hearts above all of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18. Her titles are always at the top of the charts as soon as they appear.

A little while later, we go to some of the publishing companies: : Cortez Editora from São Paulo, Pallas from Rio de Janeiro, Pinakotheke from Rio and the publishing group Senac Editora. Cortez Editora primarily produces books for children and teens with an educational slant, specialist educational literature for school and nursery teachers, and a large number of school textbooks. Managing director Antonio Erivan Gomes shows us his didactically convincing and beautifully illustrated books – such as a history of the city of Rio de Janeiro. A headache for him at the moment is the spelling reform which has been decided for all states in which Portuguese is the official language. In the coming years, all books, and above all those used in the classroom, will have to be reworked and republished.

Pallas has its own particular focus of interest. Its publishing list deals with the cultural interference that African and Indian cultures have triggered in Brazil and continue to cause.

Art is the theme for Ediçoes Pinakotheke, a publishing company now in operation for 30 years. A current title is a dictionary of art history terminology, listing translations of every Portuguese term in three languages (English, French, Spanish).

Finally, we find ourselves with Senac, a publishing group with a broad programme ranging from education and cookery books to tourism. Senac has a national office and threee regional subsidiaries operating in the federal states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and the Distrito Federal (Brasilia).

In the afternoon, we leave the fair for our flight to São Paulo. There, our schedule includes an official reception at the Brazilian Chamber of Books, the Camara Brasileira do Livro (CBL). More on that in Part III of the Brazilian Diary.

First published at http://www.boersenblatt.net/340356/

What do Germans think of when you mention Brazil? Definitely the Carnaval do Rio, caipirinha and footballs stars like Grafite and Ronaldinho. But the fifth largest country on earth (extending over almost nine million square kilometres and with a population of around 188 million) is far more than that. It is a country with huge reserves of raw materials, enormous creative potential, and with interesting, well-made books.

From 14 to 18 September, the Brazilian export promotion agency APEX and the Brazilian Chamber of Books (Camara Brasileira do Livro) hosted a group of international journalists whose trip to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo was coordinated by the Frankfurt Book Fair. A trip that focused primarily on meetings with Brazilian publishers and booksellers and in passing, did away with one or two clichés about a country that is undeservedly often ignored in the global stream of news coverage.

Monday, Day One:
The planes land before sunrise, bringing eight journalists from seven countries (China, India, USA, Russia, the UK, France and Germany). Humid warm air greets us as we enter the airport building. Dark clouds hang over Rio, it starts to rain, and the two trade mark sights – the Sugar Loaf Mountain and the statue of Christ on the Corcovado – are shrouded in mist. On the beach, it’s joggers who are mostly out and about, but that doesn’t stop me from taking a dip in the Atlantic later that morning.

Sightseeing is on the agenda for our first day. The journey up the Sugar Loaf – the Pao de Azucar in Brazilian – is uncomfortable. A strong wind is blowing in from the Atlantic rocking the cable car and repeatedly covering the mountain in clouds. But finally we make it to the top and just as suddenly as the rain storm began, it’s blown away again. We have a clear view of the city and its famous beaches, the Copacabana and Ipanema.

The first official appointment in the early evening is a book presentation in the Travessa bookshop which has six branches in Rio. Shortly before, the translator and literary critic Marcelo Backes joins our group – as one of the most important facilitators of German-language literature in Brazil. Backes not only translates contemporary German literature, but the modern classics too, such as Arthur Schnitzler and Franz Kafka. On the Travessa display tables, we discover Juli Zeh, Julia Franck (”A MULHER DO MEIO-DIA”; “Die Mittagsfrau”; “Lady Midday”), Thomas Brussig, Günter Grass, Ingo Schulze and Sascha Stanisic in Portuguese – all translated by Marcelo Backes. But that’s not all: Backes is planning other major projects – including the translation of Robert Musil’s “Mann ohne Eigenschaften”.

A visit to the Bienal do Livro in Rio de Janeiro is on the programme for the second day. More on that in Part II of the trip report.

First published at http://www.boersenblatt.net/340127/