Expert: Ken Rapoza Cruz - 1/2/2009

Question
Hello, how are you going? My name is Christina :-) I have a question about Brazil if that's okay. I was just wondering- I want to sell ebooks (written in Spanish langiage) in Brazil through my website, (which they would pay for in US dollars), but I have heard that people in Brazil mostly don't have credit cards, and so they won't order anything online. Do you reckon that is true what I have heard? The ebook is aimed at young people- do you think that young people in Brazil would order an ebook online with a credit card, or do you think that I would be wasting my time trying if they don't use credit cards? Thanks heaps for your time, I do appreciate it a lot :-) Kind Regards, from Christina

Answer
Brazilians have credit cards, of cousre, and they shop on line, but RARELY if ever use a credit card to shop on line. The system here for online purchasing is extremely different. Its like a downloadable money order, whereas you print out an a copy of a bank statement and make a payment directly to the bank in which you, the seller, have your account. Or you do that online as well, instead of printing out the money order. Its not really a money order, its called a "boletim bancario" or something like that. You will have to set your site up to allow for that if you have a Brazil bank. Seeing how your bank is just a US bank, you will have to count on a smaller customer base of Brazilians who are not afraid of putting their credit card numbers on a website. You will have to make sure your site is super secure and using all the current anti hacking and internet banking software to convince a Brazilian it is as hack safe as possible. That said, I do believe your biggest obstacle will be Spanish. Unless you are selling exotic books written by Spanish or Latin American authors that are just impossible to get in English or Portuguese, then most of those books are just as easy to pick up in Portuguese anyway -- like Garcia Marquez, for example -- so no one is going to buy a book in Spanish. I don't think I have ever even seen a book in Spanish in any major bookstore chain. I HAVE seen books in English, however.

What are these books about? I dont know this market well, of course, but I do know that what you are describing is not a mass market. So you are going to have to understand the niche very well.

Points to note:

1) Brazilians have credit cards, but tend not to use them to shop on line; they use those boletim bancarios -- which is like a money order, or a direct deposit slip that tells the merchant that the buyer is ready with the cash and has that cash available in the buyer account to qualify for the purchase.

2) All major Spanish language authors are translated into Portuguese already.

3) Spanish language text books for language study are mostly corporate publishers and you will have to study that market to see if there is anything left for an e-tailer in the Spanish language education market in Brazil.