From Publishing Perspectives:
Facing what he calls Romania’s ‘extremely shameful record’ in literacy and book culture, Bucharest MP Ovidiu Raeţchi is talking up his ‘Pact for Books’ aimed at boosting book sales.
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The Romanian parliament is discussing a legislative package called the Pact for Books, intended to stimulate book sales in a country that’s reported to lag behind other European Union member-states in terms of average book readership.
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The lawmaker says that the bill’s aim is to address what he describes as “the root causes of the extremely low percentage of active readers in Romania, and of our poor records on functional literacy.
“To tackle the basis of the problem,” Raeţchi tells Publishing Perspectives, “I’ve initiated seven legislative drafts comprising 10 major objectives, already signed by members of all political parties in the Romanian parliament.
“In the process of drafting the bills, I collected some data that reveals staggering numbers,” he says.
“Less than 30 percent of the population reads at least one book during a year, the lowest percentage in the EU and way below the European average.
“The average Romanian citizen spends roughly €3 (US$3.50) per year on books. To this, we add the fact that by the year 2016 almost half of Romanian children younger than 15 years—42 percent—fall into the category of being functionally illiterate.”
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According to Raeţchi, Romanian book industry sales this spring are “less than €100 million (US$116.9 million) per year, an extremely shameful record if we compare it with countries in the region.”
He points to the Czech Republic, with annual book sales in the range of €400 million to €500 million per year (US$464 million to $580 million), and Slovenia and Bulgaria, each with estimated market values between €100 million and €200 million (US$116 million and $232 million).
The Pact for Books’ proposed elements include introducing annual financial support of €100 (US$116) for professors, funding that can be used to purchase books. There’s a similar annual voucher of €50 (US$58) for students. What’s more the Pack for Books eliminates all value-added tax (VAT) on print sales books, and reduces the VAT on ebooks to 5 percent.
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The Pact for Books, according to its sponsoring MP, may also provide much-needed support to local bookstores, many of which are struggling to stay open.
“Fiscal measures included in the package,” Raeţchi says, “are meant to stimulate the opening of new bookstores, which have been on a continuous decline starting with the year 2000, according to the National Statistics Institute.
“Tens, if not hundreds of bookstores are closing every year” he says, “because of poor performance. This vicious cycle needs to be broken and the incentives proposed in these draft bills are directly aimed at that objective.”
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives
This is so different than when I was a kid in Romania under communism. Back then we didn’t have enough books to read. The communist party made sure that only culturally appropriate books were published, which were not enough for avid readers like myself. Occasionally, I or other friends were finding a cache of book in an attic, published before communists came to power. It was like a beam of sunlight in a dreary literal landscape of those times. As far as I know everyone was reading in those times and you were looked down upon if you were a marginal student.
So what happen since then? Probably TV with more then one or two channels available under the communism. The strict disciplinarian school system may have been changed to a western style system, where Ion (John) doesn’t have to be proficient in reading, writing and arithmetic. Those are just guesses, but reading books start at home and in school. Vouchers won’t do much, when young people are not educated to read and become a more informed persons.
The problem with government efforts like this is they focus on the wrong side of the equation: supply, instead of demand; publishers instead of readers. The vouchers are just a form of corporate welfare.
What they should be doing first is what other European nations have done: set up Gutenberg style ebook repositories with free digitized copies of national literature and reinforce it with classics from other European nations. More effective and longer lasting. Ultimately cheaper, too.
Or just publicize the existing ones like the romanian section of Europeana.
http://blog.europeana.eu/2014/01/europeana-your-ebook-library/
There are plenty of cell phone capable free ebook apps they can publicize/distribute. And cell phones are actually abundant in Romania: 21M for a population of 26M. (2010)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use
This is a case where going after adults first makes sense, to establish a culture of reading, and then facilitate pbook distribution for the younger segments.
The first step is to change the culture to stoke demand; boosting supply without changing the culture won’t do much more than put money in the publishers ‘ pockets.
“… won’t do much more than put money in the publishers ‘ pockets.”
Which looks like the idea they actually had in mind … 😉
Why a VAT on ebooks and not pbooks? Looks like their trad-pub still wants control of things.
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I love voucher systems – they are never misused!
Way back in 80-81, I spent a year at Osan AAB (Army Air Base). Let’s just add here that you don’t drink the water there …
They had vouchers to try to keep the GIs happy but not supporting the local black market. So they had vouchers for so many cases/cartons of beer/soda/smokes.
I forget what the smoke allotment was but the beer/soda was 6/2 (so up to eight cases) per month. And there I was, a non-smoker – non-drinker with a two cases of soda limit per month …
Yeah, no. Guys would give me two cases of soda for a case of beer – that they gave me the cash to buy, seems most of them ran dry long before the end of the month. No, I wasn’t wheeling and dealing, this was them coming to me and all but begging.
Towards the end of my time there I was just getting them beer with their money and I still left in the dayroom a double case stack of sodas for anyone who wanted them.
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If this goes through I see it going the same way, they will not cause them to read when there’s something they like better to do …
VAT types and classification are NOT set by the Romanian government. There was some discussion regarding that, right here, some time ago. In short, ebooks are classified as software (unless, in fact, they have a physical delivery method, IIRC; a CD of ebooks would have reduced VAT), and have a general VAT, to be set up by each individual country. Physical support books do have reduced VAT, again at a rate that is set by each country.
Regarding coupons: Yes, it’s possible that people will use them to buy porn magazines. Still, the way that people is the States game the system with coupons feels quite weird. Maybe we simply don’t have enough (coupons, both quantity and kind). Do please consider, however, the average income of Romania (a bit short of 12k USD). And no, I don’t think PPP is valid, here, since books don’t get that much cheaper across borders (and even with PPP, that would mean 25k USD vs. 60k USD).
Comparing bored-to-death GI with people on those circumstances is disingenious.
Take care.
“Comparing bored-to-death GI with people on those circumstances is disingenious.”
Not really, they’re going about ‘fixing’ something in a way that won’t actually fix anything other than the publisher’s pockets – and if the public are not interested in the no doubt ‘cultural offerings’ they can get with those vouchers it won’t help the publishers either …