Sao Paulo, (EFE).- A group of anonymous actresses and actors, writers, journalists and readers went to Livraria Cultura, the most famous book store in Brazil, on Tuesday to oppose a judge’s decision to declare the bankruptcy of the company.
The symbolic act consisted of the reading of several texts, some of them in exaltation of culture, in small letters, and others to highlight the role of Culture, in capital letters, in reading, literature and theater in Brazil.
One of the first to speak was André Acioli, director of the Eva Herz theater, located on the third floor of the bookstore, and who read a text by the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago that described Livraria Cultura as “a cathedral of books”.
While the event took place upstairs, several readers quietly leafed through copies, sitting under the wooden dragon that decorates the central atrium of the premises, apparently oblivious to the dire financial situation of the company, founded in 1947 and which until recently was the second largest network of bookstores in the country.
A bankruptcy in slow motion
Beset by debts, in 2018 Livraria Cultura was forced to take refuge under a legal process to try to avoid closure.
At that time, the company accumulated debts of 285 million reais (about 55 million dollars, at current exchange rates), an unsustainable situation.
Then came the pandemic, which devastated the publishing market in Brazil and forced Cultura to close most of the fifteen physical stores it had until then.
Only one store in Porto Alegre and the iconic Sao Paulo store survived, which has become a tourist spot in Brazil’s largest city.
Last Thursday, a court of second instance declared the bankruptcy of the company due to the delay in the payments of the debts to its creditors.
Immediately afterwards, several publishers took away their book inventories last weekend, emptying the shelves of the Sao Paulo store, which today were once again stocked with titles.
The bookstore announced that it will present an appeal to try to avoid the closure and the owners assure that, for the moment, it intends to continue operating.
The bankruptcy has left other victims: the laid-off workers.
A former worker took advantage of the event to read her termination of contract and to complain that she has not received part of the payments due, a situation that, she said, is shared by dozens of former colleagues.
The book crisis
The crisis of traditional bookstores in Brazil worsened in 2014, with the arrival in the country of the electronic giant Amazon, but the publishing market has never reached the size of the population of this nation of 215 million inhabitants.
This, because 27% of adults are functionally illiterate and 48% of Brazilians declare that they have never read a book, according to data from a 2020 survey carried out by the Pro Libro Institute.
The publishing market throws mixed numbers. In 2021, 409 million books were sold, 15% more than the previous year, although more than half of the total purchases were monopolized by the Government, according to data from the publishers’ association.
Sales in the rest of the market fell by 4%, to stand at 191 million copies, and only 30% of that number goes through bookstores with physical stores, given the growing strength of electronic stores.
The entry A collective reading against the closure of the most iconic bookstore in Brazil was first published in EFE Noticias.
Thank you very much for sharing, I learned a lot from your article. Very cool. Thanks. nimabi