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Panama's book business, from someone who learned quickly

by Eric Jackson

How did that building on the corner of Via España and Via Brasil get to be Exedra Books?

It was almost an accident, the bookstore's proprietor Sheila de Terán told an audience that was all-female with the exception of this reporter at the May 8 version of the Tuesday Talks series.

Her family owned the building, which was rented out to a series of public and private tenants who "did horrible things" to it. After her father's death she inherited it, and wanted to fix it up and open some business of their own on the premises.

Just what was the big question. One early thought was a funeral home.

But Terán, the daughter of a British mother and a Panamanian diplomat father who was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in many places, was inspired by the Barnes & Noble bookstores in the United States and looked into the possibility of getting a franchise here. No such luck. Neither Barnes & Noble nor Borders Books were interested in Latin American franchises.

That didn't stop Terán, who was well read but really didn't know anything about the book business. Her higher education was interrupted by time off to raise kids, and then for years of working for the US Department of Defense here, and when she resumed her studies she ended up with a business administration degree from Nova Southeastern University.

The building they had, and the needed renovations were done. But where to get an inventory? She bought $15,000 worth of bargain books at a Virginia book fair and made another large purchase of Spanish-language books at another fair in Costa Rica. Looking back, she acknowledges that she didn't know much about what she was doing and got the shorter end of the bargain particularly in Costa Rica. "But at least it allowed us to start."

Once in business, she discovered some distressing things about the relationship between Panamanians and books. One hint that she might have taken, she noted, was the fact that in the wholesale looting that accompanied the 1989 US invasion of Panama "nobody went into any bookstore --- no books were looted."

Only later did she encounter book thieves, some equipped with special clothing for larger scale peculations. She learned about book alarms and went through all the time consuming bother of being hard nosed about prosecuting, in order to get a reputation as someone who's an easy victim.

To learn her business, and to spread the word about Exedra, she went to all the major book fairs in Latin America and many in Spain and the United States. She has been skipping Spain recently, because the high exchange rate for the euro has priced its publishing houses out of our market.

She's had her confrontations with publishers over monopolistic practices, her learning experiences with cutthroat competition among Panama's 20 or so booksellers and her disillusionments with schools and politicians.

Now, seven years after she started, Panamanians still mostly don't read books but she's learned to play to the social niches that do. A lot of the gringos read, and now some 20 percent of her book sales are English titles. She's making her efforts to turn some of the poorest of the poor kids into little bookworms. She hosts a lot of book presentations at Exedra. She's starting to learn the ropes of online sales. She's learned to buy conservatively, to avoid losses from buying things that don't move.

That latter technique is a function of her biggest problem in comparison to the likes of Barnes & Noble and Borders. Those mega-stores take everything on consignment, something that's generally not available to her. She has to buy, and of course in that posture she can't pad her profits by charging publishers for favorable placement of their books like the American giants do.

Despite that, Exedra now has a reputation and is accepted as likely to be around the day after tomorrow, so new business opportunities are opening up. At the book fair Exedra was McGraw/Hill's bookseller. Stores in Costa Rica and Bolivia have asked her to be the buyer for their English-language books. She's got a project to create a Colon Free Zone distribution point for Latin America, which ought to reduce transportation costs and thus prices of books published on other continents. "My goal now is to make books cheaper," Terán concluded.

If you go to Exedra and you're an avid reader in either English or Spanish, the odds are that you'll find something attractive on impulse. However, the economics don't allow her to have the selection on hand that the big chains in the USA do. But there are also other economic factors in play, which mean that if you know the book you want and don't find it at Exedra you can place a special order through the bookstore and most likely get it a bit cheaper than would be the case if you ordered it online.

Take your time ordernig. Part of the whole ambience at Exedra is cultural infusion rather than high pressure to buy. You can get a coffee at the bar in the lounge, hang out, attend one of the many literary events that are always taking place, and if she doesn't get you to buy a book today she will the next time or the time after that. Like the notion of reading a book that's not required for school or work, that's something else that Sheila Terán is gradually introducing into the Panamanian way of life.

Bush - Pelosi deal improves US-RP free trade pact's chances
Scenes from the International Book Fair
Exedra's Terán talks about the book business

Construction boom continues

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Business & Economy Briefs