After 22 years of work and nearly 250 titles, the Meteora publishing house closes. They have announced it in a statement that a group of friends spread on social networks. But don’t let the readers who haven’t had time to buy this or that recent book suffer, because they don’t close the book and that’s it, but maintain responsibility for the books they have in the background, only they leave aside the news and the work from day to day.
“An editorial is not something that can be cut with scissors,” explains Jordi Fernando, 50% of the editorial with Maria Dolors Sàrries, in a telephone conversation. We will not publish new books or go to fairs, but there is still the link with published books with current rights, the distribution will continue.
“A small publisher is constantly suffering, we are already old and we have been fighting for many years. We’ve always had the feeling that whatever you do you start from scratch, as if you hadn’t done anything before, and it’s exhausting”, says Fernando. “There comes a time when you already have enough and maybe it’s time to retire a little, but we do it with the advantage that we don’t owe anyone money,” he concludes.
Fernando remembers that both he and Sàrries were civil servants –she was a high school teacher and he was responsible for publishing at the Barcelona City Council–, and they were thinking of changing jobs for various reasons: “If we didn’t do it, then we wouldn’t do it anymore. We are both philologists and we had the fundamentals, but we were unaware of the whole part of dissemination, marketing… it is what we have learned the most”.
Of these 22 years, they remain with a treasure: “Having met fantastic authors who are friends more than writers, and also among the competition, where we have made great companions and friendships.” They also show the satisfaction of having been able to publish titles by great writers, among whom Fernando cites Agustí Bartra, Joan Perucho, Marta Pessarrodona or Màrius Sampere from memory, and also “the first or consolidation works of authors such as Sebastià Bennasar, Mònica Batet, Gemma Gorga, Antònia Carré-Pons or Empar Fernández”.
Not to mention his great publishing success, The price of being Catalans by Patrícia Gabancho, published in 2007 and with around 18,000 copies sold. The first title they published was Lola Anglada or the creation of their own paradise, by Montserrat Castillo, and the last, the book of poems L’anell, by Jordi Llavina. Without forgetting a writer like Teresa Juvé, already more than a centenarian, author of the penultimate book they have published, El degollador de Vallvidrera.
Fernando also remembers how at the end of 2014 the closing of the Firex-21 distributor brought them many problems: “It was a very big mess, we were left with nothing, and we still have six or seven promissory notes that we will never collect. But between our current distributor, UDL, and other fellow publishers they saved us and gave us back the desire to continue”.
The editor also explains that even if they finish they have never had any intention of selling the fund or the publisher: “We have not even considered it, for us it is something very ours and familiar, and also a fund like ours seems to us to be nothing temptation for anyone, and in fact we have not received any offer, nor have we looked for it. We have had no interest in looking for him.”
On December 1 they will celebrate a farewell party at the ONA bookstore in Gràcia.
Catalan version, here
