Carla Chaves was carefully perusing the offerings of the Penguin Random House stand at the Buenos Aires Book Fair in Palermo. An avid reader and frequent participant in literary workshops — when she spoke to the Herald, she was working her way through the works of James Joyce and Herman Melville — Chaves, 43, estimates that she used to buy at least two books a month and sometimes more. No longer.

“I’m very selective now,” she said. “I used to shop around. Now I look for specific titles, and I pay in installments.”

Hector Rivera, a 40-year-old editor from Colombia, has taken to purchasing physical books exclusively for work.

“When I read for pleasure, I prefer digital copies because the cost is 20 or 30% less,” he said.

Living costs in Argentina have ballooned following a 54% devaluation of the peso in December, and the publishing industry has been hit particularly hard. Since then, the average price of a trade paperback has climbed from around AR$10,000 to nearly twice that, according to Cecilia Fanti, vice president of the Chamber of Independent Bookstores.

The Milei administration recently raised the minimum monthly salary in Argentina to AR$234,000 (US$254 at the official dollar rate, US$222 at the MEP rate). At the Buenos Aires Book Fair, a softcover copy of The Shining by Stephen King went for AR$40,500 with a 10% discount for customers who pay in cash.

The reasons behind this sticker shock are multifarious. Monthly inflation was 11% for the month of March, down from 13.2% in February, and cumulative inflation sits at 51.6% for 2024. Still, industry insiders are quick to point to an Argentine paper manufacturing duopoly that has seized on this crisis to drive up prices — and a government that is unlikely to come to the industry’s........

© Buenos Aires Herald