The Price of Not Reading: The mail-order system that made Brazil a nation of readers

In early-1970s Brazil, a common explanation for low readership went like this: books are expensive because few people read, and few people read because books are expensive. A distribution problem no one had solved was masquerading as cultural indifference. Created in 1973, Círculo do Livro (CdL) was the most successful attempt to break out of that loop. In fact, it was the largest “book of the…