The synergy between eBooks and printed books in Brazil

The purpose of this paper is to discuss reading habits in relation to printed books and eBooks.

The study was structured in two steps: first, an online survey was used to trace a general profile of a group of Brazilian readers who had had previous contact with digital books. Second, a subset of respondents was invited to participate in open-ended interviews. Interviewees were chosen according to their responses to the profiling questionnaire. All interviews were semi-structured.

The results indicate the existence of a synergy between digital and paper books. The decision between reading one or the other depends on several factors, amongst which the authors emphasise online accessibility, reading motivation (for work or for leisure), intended modes of use and appropriation, circumstances of use and emotional factors. Other elements of importance are the corporeality of the readers and the materiality of the devices used for reading.

The departure point of the study was the perception that, in Brazil, the arrival of digital books was accompanied by an increase in the sales of printed books. This contradicts the idea that digital books and printed books are concurrent, and the growth of the eBooks market will inevitably lead to a decrease in the revenue from printed books. The initial hypothesis was that digital and printed books could be complementary. Addressing this question required knowledge of readers’ experience with and opinion of printed and digital books. The results of the qualitative study suggest that the relation between these two types of publication is not one of alternatives, but instead is one of synergy. Specific aspects of this synergy are highlighted in the paper.