What Brazilian STM Publishers Learned in Germany | Publishing Perspectives

"Brazil and Germany are two countries, completely different from each other, separated by an ocean and thousands of miles. But when it comes to books, it seems that there is a great deal of similarities between them. After visiting about 12 companies in Germany — publishing houses, service providers, libraries and book organizations — our delegation of Brazilian publishers found out that the notion that was already in our minds was real: the book markets from Brazil and Germany very alike and can learn a lot from each other. The visits were part of the Brazilian STM Publishers Trip to Germany organized by the Frankfurt Book Fair. The members of the Brazilian contingent had the chance to exchange experiences with their German counterparts on producing STM books. It was also the perfect occasion to explain what is going on in the Brazilian STM book market and get to know how to face its never-ending changes ... Open Access was another frequently discussed issue. Publishers are basically working in two models at the same time. At least for now, this hybrid model seems to be the trend for the STM market in both countries: part of production is released through the traditional system — putting books on sale — and part of the production is going through the open access system.  Open access has now, two models: green and gold. With the Green Model, the author is self-published and the content goes online for free. With the Gold Model, the author pays the publishing house to publish his/her work online using Open Access. It is not clear yet how this situation will evolve or whether any of these models will dominate in the future ... The role of libraries and digital books came up in almost every conversation with publishers, especially with regards to business models available. Some publishing houses in Germany have make almost 80% of their sales to with, but the question about what business model is best in order to deal with libraries is very important for STM Publishers in general.  A visit to Bookwire — the German ebooks aggregator who is starting its operations in Brazil — demonstrated to the Brazilian Publishers a few different models. By the end of the trip two models came to the fore as the most viable: one time sale (with no rights to updates, so new editions have to be bought) and sales 'on demand,' here the library buys a book only once a student requests to read it. The subscription system is working but it seemed not to be the preferred model for publishers or librarians.  There’s no doubt, digital publishing the hottest issue in most conversations, if not in all conversations. This is another field where markets in Germany and Brazil are alike. According to publishers, 3% of their sales come from ebooks – some special titles or publishers with a very specific area reported up to 15%, but 3% is the average number. In Germany, as in Brazil, piracy remains a problem and everyone is concerned about it, but at the same time Germans are aware that ebook and print book are both equally subject to piracy ..."