The writer Alba Dalmau has just published Ho, ho, ho. Another Christmas story at the publishing house Univers, of the Enciclopèdia group, but he has given up doing more promotional events because he has not yet been paid the advance. “They ordered the book for me, under the promise of a more generous advance than I was used to, to which were added the rights to the audiobook, which they have already collected, but they owe me 4,500 in total euros”. And if Dalmau has now published the Christmas book, a few months ago Melcior Comes published the summer book, El dia de la balena, which is nominated for the best book of the year. Comes had negotiated to collect a large part of the advance, but they still owed 2,000 euros, which they had to pay him once delivered and published. This book already gave him another headache from the start, and it is that at Grup62 “there was a certain discomfort that an author from the house like me published a book in another publishing house”. At the end of October they still told him that he would be paid soon, when they overcome the “treasury tensions”, but in November they already warned him that “unfortunately we don’t know when it will be possible”. Comes does not doubt the work of publishers, because “they have published books that sell well, you can see them on the lists, but I don’t think that an author can save the publishing house”. He, of course, still remembers when the Mallorcan publishing house Moll went bankrupt and they owed him money. It’s an old cat.
There are other authors pending payment, such as Xavier Mas Craviotto, who has been waiting to receive an invoice for months, or the translator Mar Mañes-Garcia, who has two invoices pending and the rights for two years, or the translator Yannick Garcia, who has pending to collect an interpretation, as well as the case, for example, of an author who for prudence does not want to give the name but among other outstanding invoices she has one for translation rights that Enciclopedia has already collected and has not paid her part corresponding There are those affected who prefer not to go out in public to avoid being singled out and to preserve the personal relationships they have had in the sector for years.
Some of those affected are organizing to coordinate and try to take joint action, following the steps of the requirements that the Association of Writers in the Catalan Language made a few months ago, and which resulted in the payment of some of the overdue invoices. Despite the non-payment situation, however, in recent months encyclopedia has continued to hire books and promise loans.
One of the authors of the label’s header, Xavier Bosch – a fresh signing from last year, coming from Columna, of Group 62 -, regrets “the turmoil that the company, the brand and the workers are going through”, while claiming that “La Galera it is, almost, a State structure, and Univers is a new stamp that, in a short time, has made a hole. I am convinced that none of this will be lost.”
The director general of Enciclopèdia, Joan Abellà, is following the non-payments and rumors that have spread in recent days, even about the closure of the publishing house. “It is true that we are preparing an ERO, which we will present soon, and that the headquarters of the group has been sold to be able to deal with the urgent debt. The situation is complex but we are working to reverse it”. Abellà insists that they have not received offers to sell any of the stamps, although he knows that there have been “informal conversations” in the sector. The group’s general manager also assures that a grace period until mid-2024 and a plan that lasts until 2028 have been agreed with the creditors: “We have a structured and orderly debt, the task I have is to turn around the situation and find a business exit, because we are still needed”. Regarding the employment file – which would affect more than 10% of the workforce of 112 workers -, he explains that “it will affect the entire perimeter of the group to focus on the most viable businesses and readjust”. “What we have to try is to catch up on payments, and this also happens to reduce activity until we have a lung”, he adds.
In the sector there is fear of the effects that the fall of the group would have, on the one hand because of the weight of labels such as the historic La Galera or Univers, but also because it includes Ágora, the distributor that also owns 45% of Entredos, the distribution logistics platform that was supposed to be a great improvement and instead has led to numerous problems from the beginning. Joan Abellà acknowledges that “Entredos’ bad start” was the last straw, but he defends that “it was a necessary investment, and even the banks agreed”. At the moment, twenty Catalan publishing houses, under the marketing company Xarxa de Llibres, are demanding 2.8 million euros from them in a lawsuit. Abellà adds that “when the distribution goes well there is a flow of money, and when not, there are cash tensions”.
The history of the Enciclopèdia Group has been turbulent from the beginning, when in 1965 the first project of what would become the Great Catalan Encyclopedia was born, with the initial impetus of Edicions 62 and later of Jordi Pujol’s Banca Catalana. Over time they moved on to literature by buying Proa and creating La Galera and Pòrtic, but after a few years debt accumulated, until in 2003 the historic headquarters, Casa Garriga Nogués, had to be sold. In 2006 he participated with the Planeta and La Caixa groups in the creation of Group 62, finally absorbed by Planeta in 2013, when Enciclopèdia had to present an ERO, and still in 2020 he refinanced the debt.
When Enciclopèdia celebrated 50 years in 2015, Father Massot already pointed out in an article in La Vanguardia that “the complicated history of Enciclopèdia would make for a few novels”. And yet.
