Former publishers’ federation head: Romanians, the Europeans that read the least

Romanians read the least from among the citizens of the European Union, Henrique Mota, a former president of the European Publishers Federation, said, quoted by Agerpres.

Mota was present at an event at the Bookfest book fair, currently ongoing in the capital.

“Romania reads the least from all the EU member states. I will give you some examples and invite you to reflect on what they mean for your free and democratic society. In 2011, 29.6% of Romania’s population read only one book over the past 12 months, compared to 81.9% in Luxembourg and 75.3% in Germany. Also in 2011, only 2.8% of Romanians said they read 12 books in the past 10 months, compared to 24.4% in Luxembourg and Finland and 22.1% in Germany,” Mota said.

He said the Romanian book market was “pretty fragile.” “On the one hand, Romania reports low turnover numbers; both the net turnover and the combined turnover are very low. In what the total market value is concerned, the total turnover relative to the number of inhabitants, Romania is last on sales per resident, if we are taking into account the sales in stores not in online. Regarding earnings, Romania does pretty well and stands somewhere in the middle, alongside Austria, Belgium, Sweden and Hungary. But, if we are referring to sales per resident, it goes down to the last places,” he went on.

One solution to this situation would be a national network of bookstores, he argued.

“You need to establish a network of bookstores across the country because brick-and-mortar stores are, in the end, indispensable to attracting consumers and meeting demand. At the same time, bookstore owners need to be more creative, need to attract the public and breath life into their bookstores through such events as book launches, book clubs, cultural programs and so on. You need to support publishers to promote diversity, to promote not just mass literature but also novel things,” Mota said.

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