Book sale advances 1° quarter 9.9%

The market of books begins to give evidence of a more consistent recovery of sales. After growing 1.5 percent in 2017, the revenue of the sector presents, for the first two months of this year, an accumulated growth of 9.9%. There's an uncertainty, however, if the expansion trend recorded so far will sustain itself over the next few months. "We're still on a roller coaster. Hopefully the self-sustained growth curve, but I'm not blindly optimistic "sums up the President of the National Association of bookshops (ANL), Bernardo Gurbanov. The entity performs, in partnership with GfK, a study that measures the monthly sales of the sector, and that pointed to the accumulated growth of 9.9%. According to the leader, events like the World Cup and the general elections may interfere with the positive trend that begins to draw on the market, but the expectation for the year is a positive result. "Oscillations will occur, mainly on account of the two events, but our view is that the industry finish the year with a growth of approximately 8%," he says. In the months of January and February, the market of books made $573 million and 11.1 million of sold R products, according to the survey. Only in February, the billing was R, 10.6% higher than the $228 million registered in the same month of last year. In terms of volume, were 4.5 million books sold (11.6%, compared to the previous year). The growth last month was pulled by the categories of comic books and religious books. The first showed a growth of more than 51%. "It was a very significant and unprecedented increase", says the President of ANL. The rise of the category is linked to the large number of releases of films with superhero themes, which has stimulated the search for comic stories dealing with this subject. "In the old days, comic books were more child-themed, such as Donald Duck and Turma da Mônica. Now the Panini invests more in books and Comics, superheroes, "explains the President of the network of bookstores, reading, mining Marcus Talbot. The company, sales in February rose 3.5% in same store concept (which considers only the units open more than a year). In January, according to the businessman, was close to the high inflation. With the improvement of the scenario this year, the network is already planning to expand the pace of store openings. Teles account that readings should open six units and close two loss-making. In 2017, were three openings and three locks of shops. Promotions another factor that contributed to the performance of the first two months of the year was the highest level of promotions. While in the first two months of last year the discounts were, on average, 11.3%, this year the percentage rose to 13.6%. To Gurbanov, higher discounts promotions tend to help in stimulating the purchase.