“Red Beard,” a pseudonym for a European expat in Brazil, follows up below on an earlier item where he discussed e-book software used by the country’s national library. He believes that a true TeleReaderish approach, offering not just knowledge for the masses but also the proper tools to access it, could be a welcome alternative to the present. Look at the academic-technical book to the left. It sells for $120.95US via Amazon–fifty percent more than the monthly minimum wages in Rio. A locally bootlegged edition has cost $22US.

After a few years living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am again back in Brazil. This is the country where my children get the best private education available locally, so I am familiar with the text-book, p-book and library scenes. Digital books, whether CD/DVD or download flavor, are pretty much unknown here. And yet the potential demand is immense. Here are some background facts to chew on, from O GLOBO, the leading Rio newspaper:

Population estimate: 176 million (2000 census was 169 million). Literacy is close to one hundred per cent, a huge leap forward over the past thirty years.

Internet access: Home users 14.7m, of whom close to one million have broadband ADSL or cable modem access; non-domestic work, schools, kiosks, public sector access are another 11.3m users for a total 26m.

Socio-economic Web usage, divided into five classes A thru E based on monthly earnings:

Classes A & B (wealthiest & upper-middle class) account for 91 percent of all daily Web access; Classes C& D (lower-middle class & employed working poor), 75 percent of the population, represent balance 9 percent of daily Web access and their Web usage is doubling annually as they become computer-literate.

Brazilians are innovative and info-hungry. Perhaps this explains why they access the Web on average 16 times a month, compared to Spain’s average user’s 13 times and Germany’s 14 times, despite home users paying hefty by-the-minute local telephone toll charges for predominantly dial-up access. Further, their average Web access lasts for 38 minutes, compared to Japan’s 33 minutes–Japan ranks second in this average length-of-connection world comparison. Remember, Brazilians’ average family take-home pay is about one tenth of that of families living in the top thirty economies of the world (source OECD).

So you can correctly identify this as a big nation of youngsters; but the bugaboo is lack of money, whether in people’s pockets or the government’s–at all levels. I predict the challenge of bringing digital content and individual devices to read or hear will not be solved in Third World or emerging nations like Brazil until end-user costs are dramatically different from where they stand today.

When we can distribute a sheet of laminate that is in fact a solid-state or chemical memory e-reader costing one or two U.S. dollars, and when there is infinite e-content at negligible cost available to the consumer without any DRM hassle, we shall see e-readership take off. Authors will be thrilled to write for this market because their readership will be in the hundreds of millions and all distribution will be digital so fractions of cents can mean big payouts to the best. In my 50s, I may not live to see this day, which is sad as such technology will be within our grasp within the next decade. I can imagine no weapon more potent and inexpensive in the Western arsenal than that the power of readership offers us to defeat those who hate us and would have had Americans disappear under Ground Zero at the World Trade Center. I can see the French, Germans and Russians (and the People’s Republic of China?) one day backing the U.S. were it ever to undertake such a ‘Books for the World’ initiative as it could be content-transparently promoting their cultures on a par with the West’s.

Compare that optimal future with the expense of knowledge today–and the related temptation for piracy. Here is another item from O GLOBO, dated Oct. 15:

Police raided the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) sprawling campus located close to Rio de Janeiro’s international airport yesterday morning and carried away more than 2,000 copies of illegally photocopied textbooks. The stash was found in two photocopier stores located inside an Engineering Faculty building where photocopied versions of books had been on sale for two months. Both photocopier store operators were charged with violating copyright laws.

Texts included academic books published in the local language, Brazilian Portuguese, as well as in English, and were displayed on the stores’ shelves like books. The price for a photocopied version of Population Balances from Academic Press was [US$22.00].

Rio’s anti-piracy police squad was tipped off by a Brazilian association comprising the thirty largest publishers and leading authors in this South American nation of 176 million people. This national association claims illegal photocopying of books, or book piracy, is hurting book sales.

I could ramble on and on about this low-cost digital library topic but won’t–we’re both too busy. Suffice it to add that Brazil’s college undergraduate population is around five million. Wow, what an opportunity to win over the hearts and minds of those who so much dislike the citizens of more prosperous countries.

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The TeleRead take: Well said, Red Beard. If nothing else, you’ve made a good argument for e-publishers thinking internationally–and perhaps considering the low per-capita incomes in many of their potential markets. Perhaps readers in countries such as Brazil should not be charged as much those in well-off Western countries. Think of the market-development potential here. Needless to say, a TeleRead-approach could help by fostering the growth of appropriate national digital libraries and the infrastructure to help spread the knowledge around. – David Rothman.

Reminder:
“Red Beard,” despite the name, is not a pirate.

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