The Challenges of Encouraging a Reading Culture in
Developing Countries
When you live in parts of the world other than
industrialized countries, chances are you can’t fulfill all of your bookish quirks
and literary dreams. Imagine that after marathoning Stranger Things, you want some
cute bookmarks or some trendy accessories. You go to Amazon or Etsy, but then
realize that you are volunteering in a remote village in Mongolia and you won’t
have them anytime soon. Sounds inconvenient, doesn’t it? That’s how things work
in developing countries.
If you have been living in one or if you are traveling to
one, you won’t have much access to the bookish stuff offered to much of the
rest of the world. Below are some bookish things I wish developing nations had
access to, to develop and improve their reading culture.
Online Bookstore as Comprehensive as Amazon
Not every country with emerging markets has its own
Amazon store, except India, Brazil, China, and Mexico. Love it or hate it,
Amazon makes book buying easier by delivering books right to your doorstep.
This kind of service still needs improvement in some developing countries while
they adapt to the demands of shoppers and solve challenges in logistics. For
instance, in the Philippines, the norm is still going to bookstores instead of
buying in an online bookshop, due to limitations.
What I like most about Amazon is that it has exhaustive
bibliographic data. It’s my go-to source whenever I want to find out the
publication details of a book. You can’t find these things on other platforms
like China’s Alibaba and Singapore’s Shopee and Lazada.
What’s more, you can also find plenty of book accessories
there that are not simply available elsewhere.
OverDrive-Powered Digital Libraries
While some publishers from developing countries have
partnerships with book lending platforms, the content the libraries offer is so
meager. Though in my case, OverDrive doesn’t have partner libraries in the
Philippines. Seriously, none at all. That’s because they prefer print books
over other digital formats. I think this must also be the case with other
countries where ebooks and audiobooks are still a novelty.
As a night-owl bookworm, I sometimes browse randomly at
night for free ebooks to marathon even though my TBR is full. My genre
preference changes all the time. What if I feel like reading something
feel-good tonight? Well, it’s the 21st century, and you would think that things
are one snatch away. The first place I would go to is the Amazon U.S. store,
but titles there can be very expensive and I don’t feel like spending. Second
is…well, the library. But it doesn’t have an ebook collection!
Nada. Do you get what I mean? This is what it feels like
to live in low- and middle-income countries. Ebooks and audiobooks are not even
commonplace in the library. I even did a sweep of the Pan-Asia region and found
out that only two developing nations have OverDrive-powered digital libraries.
I’m a little bit jealous.
Meager collection or not, these digital libraries will be
of big help to those who can’t afford to buy books. A 2014 UNESCO study in some
developing countries found that “people read more when they read on mobile
devices, that they enjoy reading more, and that people commonly read books and
stories to children from mobile devices,” The Guardian
reports.
Fast and Reliable Postal Service
In most countries, orders from international online
bookstores usually take a while to arrive.
For instance, the book you order from UK-based Book
Depository, which attracts bookworms with its “free” shipping service, takes
over a month—and sometimes more—to get into your hands! Imagine the frustration
of having to wait for a year to read the last book of your favorite series; and
then another month on top of that. You still don’t know who killed who and if
that billionaire was tamed.
Conclusion
It’s not my intention to pit these two groups against
each other nor to illustrate the wide berth between them. After all, the terms
“developing” and “developed” may imply different meanings. Their usage is still
a developing debate, as NPR
notes. But for the sake of simplicity, we’ll go by Study.com’s
definition of developing countries as those that are “less industrialized and
have lower per capita income levels.”
We already know the benefits of reading books for
everyone especially children, and so I just wish everyone had a fair access to
them, as much as possible.
The bottom line is, everyone will be encouraged to read
if there’s a faster way to access books—whether full-fledged online bookstores
or heavily stocked digital libraries. What are the other ways that you
think can help develop a strong reading culture in developing countries?
Source | https://bookriot.com
Regards
Mr. Pralhad Jadhav
Master of Library & Information Science (NET
Qualified)
Research Scholar (IGNOU)
Senior Manager @ Knowledge Repository
Khaitan & Co
Twitter Handle | @Pralhad161978
Mobile @
9665911593
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