Robert Max Steenkist is a professor of publishing studies at Universidad de los Andes. He was the last speaker of the session Ascent of E-readers.

Robert Max Steenkist @ the unbound book conference – photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

Robert Steenkist started his talk with an introduction on the book in Latin America. He informed: “In Latin America we do not read.” Robert explains that there are in fact many publishers in Latin America. The publishing activities in Colombia are concentrated in the cities. 7 publishers publish half of the titles and 400 publishers produce the rest. Books are very expensive in Latin America because they have to be imported.

How are new technologies helping this?

Robert continues his presentation with some facts about new media in Latin America. He shows that many people maintain a blog while many people do not have a computer or access to internet. For this reason cell phones are very popular in Latin America. Steenkist illustrates the strong activity in the new media field in Latin America by using the example of the Colombian politician Atanas Mockus. In 2010, The politician had the most followers on Twitter and Facebook and his name was the fifth most typed name on Twitter worldwide.

The main problems with the publishing industry in Latin America are that the laws protect books and big publishers. Although the government treats the book as a democratic tool for development, they do not provide access to books. Robert affirms that this is a strange policy. He explains how Latin America does not have a best seller culture. The nature of the industry is based on the theory of Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’. Diversity is very important for the publishing industry. ‘Bibliodiversity’ is a political tool for independent publishers so that they can stand against the big publishers. Bibliodiversity is very important according to Robert since books play an important role in preserving knowledge which would otherwise be lost forever. The governments promote bibliodiversity by stimulating free circulation and providing support to less popular authors against the powerful multinationals. However Robert notes that the governments do not include new media in these strategies.

PDF of presentation available here: Unbound Book Presentation.