The bookshop capital of the world, Buenos Aires risks losing most of its independent bookstores, the Argentine book sector warned last week.
Several book industry chambers, including publishers, distributors, authors, and independent bookstores, alerted to the government’s intention to scrap the country’s fixed-price regulation.
The move is part of a major bill authored by the deregulation ministry led by Federico Sturzenegger, which also affects the pharmaceutical and real estate businesses, and is expected to land in the Senate following the winter break.
Passed almost unanimously by Congress in 2001, the Defense of the Bookselling Activity Law #25.542 requires publishers to set a single retail price for books across all sales channels. Since then, it has been one of the cornerstones of the Argentine publishing industry, which has tripled the number of new titles published every year, as well as doubled the number of publishing houses.
Today, Argentina has around 1,500 bookshops, and one of the highest bookstore-per-person ratios, according to Argentina’s Book Chamber (CAL, for their Spanish acronym)
