Reading rates in Latin America have always been a concern, especially now with so many changes in reader habits and innovations in formats.
An overview: in Colombia, from 2019 to 2022 there was an increase in the average annual reading, reaching 2.7 titles per person. In Mexico for 2022 the average was 3.9, with the highest audience between 18 and 24 years old. And in Spain, always an important setting for books, the reading rate has grown by 5.7 points, especially among adolescents.
Since 2010, with Amazon and Kindle, digital reading has conquered a large part of the market. By 2020, the consumption of digital platforms increased by 145% in Spain, while in Latin America it is becoming increasingly popular, with Argentina in the lead followed by Mexico and Colombia, according to the annual ebook consumption ranking.
Where, then, are the dark predictions of reading if it still seems relevant to audiences? Perhaps its presence in new formats and the need to reinvent itself is the answer we are looking for.
Digital formats offer advantages that fit today’s lifestyle. More portability, greater storage capacity, a wide catalog of contents at relatively low prices, and usability benefits such as increased font size and light for night reading, among others.
These have “the ability to adapt to the user in a minimum of time,” says Quique López Solbes, director of the Master’s Degree in Editorial Design and Digital Publications at the Esdesign Barcelona School of Design.
“The industry should understand and accept change and, based on this, be able to position itself as one more option to complement what is a priority at the given moment,” explains Quique López, citing cinema and its adaptability to changing environments as an example. new domestic formats that already reach amazing levels of production and quality.
And where is the book?
Highlighting the advantages of digital does not imply ignoring the benefits of the printed format. “The physical book has an object value -let’s say fetishist- that the digital product will never have: paper, traditional reading by turning pages, touch, even smell. We associate tranquility, rest, rest, vacation periods, disconnection, purity, endless moments lived, to the fact of reading a physical book. There are many added values to reading the physical book that I think still give it a sentimentality that is difficult to overcome”, points out the expert.
However, although the printed book has the conditions to remain, the new role that reading plays in present and future times must also be accepted, more as a complement than as the main axis of communication.
“With or without digital formats, reading will decrease,” says Quique López. “There is a change in customs and ways in which we consume leisure. It has happened with the cinema, it happens with programmed television and it will happen with reading, whether or not it is digital. Simply, reading will give way to an expanded reading, to another modality that, possibly, is the sum of what we now know as reading and other forms of leisure that are beginning to be those of majority consumption.
And that is where editorial design must find a way to get the most out of the hundreds of resources that virtuality offers. It is not just a question of converting what is printed to PDF, but of finding ways to enrich what paper already does well.
Adding, not duplicating -which is not the same, although it may seem so- is the slogan that defines the complement that digital platforms offer to traditional formats, where the reading experience expands, taking advantage of new resources that modern media offer. .