In its third iteration, Lisbon’s Book 2.0 conference explores the urgency of a reading deficit and international pathways to come. (Sponsored)

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

See also:
Lisbon’s Third Book 2.0 Speakers Include IPA’s Gvantsa Jobava
Portugal’s Book 2.0: Lisbon Hosts a Second Edition
IPA’s Karine Pansa in Portugal: Publishing Must Be ‘Tough and Smart’

Silvia Pazos Rodriguez: ‘To Transform Ourselves’

As Publishing Perspectives’ readers will recall, the third iteration of Portugal’s Book 2.0 conference continued this program’s mission of turning around what the show’s organizers forthrightly admit is a challenging environment: Portugal has one of the lowest rankings in Europe for reading habits.

Admirably committed to bettering this, the team behind Book 2.0: The Future of Reading—held on September 3 and 4—produces the event as the Portuguese Publishers and Booksellers Association’s (APEL) flagship contribution to “a national strategy to promote reading and literacy in Portugal.”

And in its follow-up to this month’s successful third edition of its conference, the Book 2.0 offers several top-line talking points from the show, which was held for a first time this year at Lisbon’s spacious waterfront Champalimaud Foundation complex near the 16th-century Tower of Belém.

Among those top-line points:

The publishers’ association presented what’s described as a comprehensive diagnosis of the state of reading and the book market in Portugal, stressing the urgent need for a national strategy on reading and literacy, as a collective commitment spanning multiple sectors.

• Seventy-six percent of Portuguese respondents tell survey programs that they have reading habits—but only 58 percent purchased books in 2024.
• The Portuguese publishing market in 2024 reached €204 million (US$238 million), which is an increase of some 9 percent over the figures for 2023. The output, in other words, is rising, as the effort to draw the population to it continues.
• Scientific analysis of the impact of screens led Maryanne Wolf, a neuroscientist who directs UCLA’s Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, to propose a “bi-literate brain” to preserve the capacity for deep reading in the digital age.
• And the Swedish population’s reading habits were positioned as a model for those of Portugal, Stockholm reporting sales of 69 million books in a year as compared to Portugal’s sales of 14 million. Both nations’ populations number approximately 10 million people.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa: ‘A Factor of Democracy’

In terms of its efforts to imbue the Portuguese population with something closer to the Swedish sense for reading, one of the most important advantages for Book 2.0 is strong, personal engagement by the country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

In a show of solidarity with the effort, Rebelo de Sousa became a key figure in the programming, appearing in an onstage conversation with Livraria Menina e Moça’s Cristina Ovidio, and emphasizing that the book is “a factor of democracy.”

Rebelo de Sousa told the conference’s assembly that reading “enriches the ability to understand and accept others” and that “not reading is renouncing the future.” He stressed that “preserving the essence of the National Reading Plan is fundamental,” a ringing endorsement from the government for Book 2.0’s progress so far and its plans for enhanced internationalism in coming iterations.

In sync with Rebelo de Sousa’s concept of a society-wide approach to the imperative of reading, the program was phased across four focal themes, attendees looking at issues of:

• Technology and artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on copyright protection and the impact of AI on publishing;
• The Portuguese language and the preservation of cultural identity in an internationalized world;
• Literacy and education and efforts in improving literacy levels in Portugal; and
• Digital Education and why educating and creating reading habits in the digital age matters.

A Program Moving Toward Increased Internationalism

At “ground level,” one of the most impactful presentations may have come from the United Kingdom-based entrepreneur Ben Keene, whose Rebel Book Club has a nonfiction focus and has scaled its reach with events in London and Bristol.

Also onstage, of course, was the International Publishers Association (IPA) president Gvantsa Jobava, the Federation of European Publishers president Sonia Draga, and Axel Voss, a member of the European Parliament whose specializations include digital policy, including artificial intelligence and copyright.

Voss argued for the protection of copyright without hindering the advancement of AI in Europe. He insisted that the solution lies in a simple and cohesive licensing system, especially for press and books, in an increasingly centralized digital ecosystem.

But at bottom, of course, were the statistics developed by the publishers’ association, indicating that Portugal continues to register the lowest per-capita indicator for book purchases in the European bloc’s countries with similar levels of development: 1.3 books per inhabitant.

As the former Swedish minister of education Johan Pehrson pointed out, Swedish parents tend to be reading to their children by age 5, and an introduction of digital textbooks seems to have delivered disappointing results in Stockholm’s appraisal.

The OECD Lúcia Dellagnelo confirmed that the most recent PISA and PIAAC studies show only 5 percent of respondents demonstrating advanced reading skills, the trend being spotted in all age groups.

As Silvia Pazos Rodriguez, Book 2.0’s director, leads her team forward into new areas of internationalism for the program, the point, she said, is a coherent and comprehensive strategy. “The theme is very much aligned with how we, as a society, manage to transform ourselves in the face of the current moment.”

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More from Publishing Perspectives on publishing conferences in the international book business is here, more on the Portuguese market is here, and more on publishing in Europe is here. Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.

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