Books and reading: celebration and crisis

This week the 37th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) began. That the FIL is approaching four decades, that it is a reference on a global scale, that sections and cultural supplements of Ibero-America cover it in detail, that it brings together hundreds of editors, thousands of writers and commentators, all organized by a public university, that of Guadalajara, should be a reason for celebration and pride. Furthermore, the fact that the government of Jalisco has left behind grudges against the University that in no way justified the contempt for the festival of reading and print is, this year, good news.

But the FIL is just an oasis in the midst of an arid crisis in the Mexican publishing industry, which is due to the long-standing lack of readers and which is aggravated by recent government decisions against the little more than 220 publishers that remain in Mexico. the country.

Mexico has few readers and the number is decreasing. Every year the INEGI publishes the results of the Module on Reading (MOLEC) survey. The outlook is bleak because it is getting worse: in 2023 the percentage of literate people over 18 years of age who read is 68.5 percent, 12.3 percentage points less than in 2016.

No type of reading material is the majority. Minorities are those who read books (40.8 percent), go to the Internet (37.7 percent), consult magazines (23.6 percent), newspapers (18.5 percent) or browse comics (6.1 percent).

The data reveal that there are more non-reading women (34.3 percent) than men (28.3 percent), and that the habit of reading decreases with age: while between 18 and 34 years old, 80 percent read something, between those aged 65 and over the percentage falls to 60 percent. Obviously, younger people read online forums more frequently (63 percent) than older people (10.6 percent).

There are few book readers and, unfortunately, they read fewer and fewer copies: while in 2016 3.8 books were read on average per year, in 2023 only 3.4. 45 percent read for entertainment, 27 percent for work or study, 19 percent for general culture and 9.0 percent for religion.

Despite economic difficulties, it does not seem that the cost of printed materials is the main obstacle to reading: 62 percent of readers access free books and 71 percent access free magazines.

For its part, the National Chamber of the Mexican Publishing Industry (CANIEM) provides alarming figures on the state of health of this market. While in 2018 134.8 million books were produced in Mexico, for 2021 – the last year available – only 89.1 million: a drop of 34 percent. Production in monetary terms went from 3,242 million pesos in 2018 to 2,126 million in 2021: also a reduction of 34 percent. The crisis is of that magnitude: in the first three years of the six-year term, the country’s publishing production shrank by a third.

On the income side, in 2021, 99.2 million copies were sold, including imported books, for a total of 9,119 million pesos. Basic education books represented 50.4 percent of the volume and 46.8 percent of the sales amount. As is the case in other countries, the publishing industry depends largely on books for school use: thanks to this income, publishers can take risks on other projects, publish unknown authors, diversify and increase the cultural offer.

But in August 2023, the government issued a decree so that private publishers stop offering books with secondary education content to the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), as has been the case for more than 25 years. The mechanics were this: educators and booksellers designed materials for each subject, presented them to a call from the SEP, and teachers chose the materials for their students. This allowed 38 million books to be produced and distributed in 2021 for 1,488 million pesos, which represented 16 percent of the industry’s income.

Unilaterally, without explanation, the government closed that door in a commitment to meaningless nationalization, curtailing the richness and diversity of educational materials in public secondary schools and damaging the viability of the publishing industry. Another field where this government leaves a territory devastated by arbitrariness, improvisation and negligence. Nothing to celebrate.

The author is an economist and professor at UNAM