Elixir memory model question

Reading a 4MB pdf (Adopting Elixir.pdf) and adding it in a map with 1 key and then adding that map 100 times to a list
The size of the file is 3.8MB, after that using :erlang.memory(:total) ended up eating 6MB of memory.. An overhead of 2MB for 100 copies
So I guess until a change is made, the values are passed by reference..

Still can use some good blog posts about the topic..