GETTING THE WORLD TO READ

In 2015, we introduced the Livraria Lello entrance voucher and began heading towards our goal of transforming our visitors into readers. In just the first years, we quintupled the number of books sold. While up until 2015 less than 10% of our visitors would go on to purchase books, we closed 2019 with over 55% of our visitors doing so and on an upwards trend. The number of books thereby sold soared from 60,000 in 2015 to around 700,000 in 2019, reflecting over 1,900 of our books per day finding new readers. Furthermore, in 2019, Livraria Lello held a 26% share of the book market in the Norte region of Portugal.

In 2018, we launched our collection of literary classics translated into different languages – The Collection, returning to our long tradition as publishers, with a collection that now runs to 29 different titles. We have thus helped the great works of Portuguese literature, including The Lusiads (Luís de Camões), Love of Perdition (Camilo Castelo Branco), The Maias (Eça de Queirós) and Message (Fernando Pessoas), to reach different parts of the world – 207 identified countries –, taken back by their readers who visited us. Simultaneously, we have helped to broaden the range of the leading works of universal literature available in Portuguese, now including The Art of War (Sun Tzu), Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare), Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde), among many other unforgettable classics.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the world to reinvent itself and now, more than ever, we felt the mission to get the world reading was particularly essential. We turned this challenge into inspiration and, during the first national lockdown, we opened the first bookstore Drive-thru in the world to ensure access to this essential good that is the book. In order to get books to those who live far from Porto, we also made PDF versions of the titles in our The Collection available on the Livraria Lello website.

Furthermore in 2020, we launched a new collection paying special attention to the readers of the future, children. The Little Collection leads even the youngest of audiences through the great classics of child-youth literature, with adapted texts then illustrated by some of the most renowned Portuguese illustrators. The collection is translated into Portuguese, English, Spanish and French and was designed in accordance with standards for economic, environmental and social sustainability.