There are more and more Latin American publishers opening offices in Spain. There has always been a connection between both parts of the ocean, but in recent years the ties seem to have strengthened even more”, reflects Francisco José Najarro, general editor of the Chilean RIL Editores. He is from Zafra, Badajoz, but he lived in Chile for several years and in November 2017 he was in charge of publishing the first book with a Spanish ISBN. “In 2018 we just settled. Of course, starting from the bottom. Although in Chile we are a fairly powerful medium-sized publisher, since we have been here since 1991, here we have to start from scratch because the market is very different”.
Also in 2018, Adam Blumenthal, from the Argentine publisher Sigilo, undertook the same adventure. “In our case it was for a personal matter. I was just associating with Maxi Papandrea, who coordinates the editorial from Buenos Aires, when for family reasons we had to move to Madrid. So, we said: why not open headquarters there? We thought it would be interesting to have a local office, print from here and have national distribution, as well as control the press issues on the ground. And so, little by little we have been growing”, says the publisher, who welcomes the entry of new labels.
The Mexican Sexto Piso, which has been here since 2005 and has become a benchmark for many, believes that one of the reasons for this new scenario is that “conditions have improved. It is no longer necessary to make large print runs of a book as before for it to be profitable. It is enough with one or two people in the country, who can also telework to save costs. If the pandemic has given us anything, it is technological advantages that make the model more flexible. It is no longer necessary to set up a whole structure to be able to get ahead, ”says its director in Spain, Santiago Tobón. His colleague, the publisher José Hamad, adds that “after years breaking down stone, Sexto Piso has managed to be one more Spanish publisher, and this sometimes makes things easier. There are people who don’t even know that the project is Mexican.”
Almadía is another of the Mexican publishers that has settled in Madrid. “We opened in 2022. Since its foundation we thought about the possibility of coming to Spain and in fact in 2008 we traveled to Madrid and Barcelona to show our catalogue, thinking that a distribution could be made, but we realized that the market was more complex . Even so, we do not get the idea out of our heads. We focus on growing in Mexico and building a powerful catalog. And, now yes, once this is achieved, we land here”.
Stability is another of the incentives to come. “Latin American countries tend to have cyclical socioeconomic situations that go through deep crises from time to time. This swing is suffered a lot, and I am no longer saying in the publishing sector. In the Argentine case, in addition, inflation is added, which makes everything much more complicated. All of this is a trigger for many publishers to have considered coming in recent years. It’s a risk, like everything. But we have also been through a pandemic that has demonstrated the robustness of the Spanish market. In addition, the covid has encouraged many to jump into the pool and carry out those projects with which they never quite dared ”, points out Leopoldo Kulesz from Libros del Zorzal, which began operating in Barcelona in 2017 and, four years later. Later, in the midst of a health emergency, he was encouraged to settle permanently in the Catalan capital.
Leonora Djament, for her part, reflects on the Spanish market, which she describes as “very large, competitive and with many excellent local publishers. This means that the visibility of a Latin American label in Spain is not always easy.” The editor is in charge of Eterna Cadencia in Argentina and, although she recognizes the importance of moving in Spain, she anticipates that “we do not have a physical headquarters there, but we do have two people, Juan Pablo Diaz and Jerusalem Llácer, in charge of the press and from the business side.”
The case of Big Sur is different, since it is not a Latin American publisher, but rather the project was born directly in Barcelona. Ulises Milla, with extensive experience in the Venezuelan publishing sector, started the label while coordinating (and still does) Alfa, an independent family publisher based in Caracas that had previously passed through Montevideo and Buenos Aires. “My family has always been entrepreneurial and has been related to the world of books and I have followed that same path. What happens is that I thought that it did not make sense to bring Alfa here, as it is configured today. It is important to do that analysis before embarking on something like that. In our case, it was better to start from scratch, literally.”
The Km América festival, which starts today in Barcelona dedicated to Latin American literature, already has several authors from these labels. And specialized bookstores, such as Lata Peinada, with stores in Barcelona and Madrid, notice this: “There are new ones and those that were already increasing their catalog in Europe. There is an increase in titles, and they are welcome”, points out the bookseller Ezequiel Naya.
Juan Casamayor, from the Páginas de Espuma publishing house, assures that “at the moment in Spain there is a good entry of Latin American literature. We are living an optimal moment and women writers are leading it. I would not say that there is a boom of Latin American writers since they always wrote, what happens is that it is now when they have more visibility”.
He encourages new publishers to carry out their purposes. Of course, he warns, “coming to Spain is not a panacea. It is true that it is a highly developed market and it has positive things, including a very powerful data and metadata system. A small bookstore in Sabadell can sell books online without problems if It wants to. But it also has an absolutely terrible problem for those of us who participate in it, and that is that 14,000 fiction books are published here every year. There are many new features.
Marketing models are another issue to consider. “In some Latin American countries, publishers can sell directly. In Spain this is unthinkable. Here a publisher that sells directly or self-distributes is a marginal publisher. To function properly, it has to sell through the bookstore channel with a distributor,” he stresses. Casamayor.
