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There is a certain consensus in the publishing sector regarding recovery, although there is also unanimity that nothing will ever be as it was before, as in the fat years. In the offices of Penguin Random House, activity is frantic and Claudio López Lamadrid, editorial director, receives us in his office full of books: "It's a good moment because we have overcome a very deep and very systemic crisis that has lasted a long time and has caused the market to fall by 40%. In the last two years, it has recovered and is growing, little by little but it is growing… This will already be the third year it grows. So I think the crisis can be considered overcome."
For Maribel Luque, literary agent of the legendary Agencia Balcells, "the situation is worrying. There is too wide a gap between the two large groups that lead the sector with ever-increasing market shares and the small independent publishers. The editors of the large groups are very pressured by their financial directors and basically publish books with certain commercial guarantees, while the small independents are more adventurous. Unfortunately, in many cases, the infrastructure and means of these small ones do not allow them to reach as far as they would like, but those who succeed play a very important role both culturally and in contributing to editorial diversity. This problem is not intrinsic to the Spanish publishing sector but affects the whole world. And the most regrettable thing is that these circumstances allow excellent books to remain unpublished… or unwritten!"
"Technological changes, the speed at which information circulates, the multiplication of possibilities to access knowledge and entertainment, there are many things that are transforming our sector and the editor's work. But in essence, it remains the same: making the work of necessary authors accessible to readers," says Silvia Sesé, from Anagrama. "The editor is a one-man band," continues Malcolm Otero Barral, from Malpaso, "before he dedicated himself to deciding and selecting, now you have to do everything: social networks, promotion, you have to be very in contact with the media, dedicate much more time to booksellers so they know you and give space to your authors. You have to make a place for yourself. You have to do more things for your books to survive."
The so-called "Netflix model" has transformed the foundations of cultural consumption on screens. A model based on the Triple A: accessible, affordable, and attractive. "Netflix is the great editor of the 21st century," reflects Celaya."The fundamental change," for López Lamadrid, "is the proximity to the final reader. Now you can address a very specific sector, the reader of thrillers, for example, before you launched a campaign that reached everyone. That's why the obsession of marketing now is to get reliable databases." However, for Malcolm, "the pending subject is contact with the reader, we always have a filter, which is the bookseller, a quality intermediary."
New technologies and changes in reading habits are undoubtedly factors that keep the sector very awake and in constant adaptation. Javier Celaya founded the company Dosdoce in 2004 with the intention of providing the publishing sector with resources to adapt to the digital ecosystem. And now he has opened a branch in Barcelona of the Swedish company Storytel, which offers audiobooks by subscription. The so-called "Netflix model" has transformed the foundations of cultural consumption on screens. A model based on the Triple A: accessible, affordable and attractive. "Netflix is the great publisher of the 21st century," reflects Celaya. "It's a platform that tells you stories. People used to read and now they connect to Netflix... In Spain, between 10 and 12% of total book sales are digital. There is an annual growth of 50% year-on-year and 20% for audiobooks."
"Barcelona does not take advantage of its potential. To begin with, the great fair in Spanish is not in Spain... It's very sad"Amazon does not reveal sales figures or data but Betty Argilés, content manager forKindle in Spain, he confesses that "it's enough to get on a subway car, a train, or a plane and see that while a few years ago people carried physical books; now you can count how many carry electronic devices or how many are reading with the Kindle app on a mobile device, be it a smartphone or a tablet. This gives you a measure of how popular digital reading has become in these six years and what it has meant for the Spanish publishing industry."
Until recently, no one seemed to dispute Barcelona's prominence as the capital of Spanish-language publishing. Now, between the political situation and the lack of a clear and decisive commitment from institutions, the controversy is on the table. López Lamadrid does not hide his displeasure: "to begin with, we would need common ground, to agree between the two halves... And to all go together again, which now seems impossible. There are things that work very well because there is private initiative and will behind them (Sonar, Primavera Sound, Comic Fair, Manga) not because institutions support them or because there is great consensus." Mònica Martín, from the MB literary agency, shares a similar opinion: "Barcelona does not take advantage of its potential. To begin with, the great Spanish-language fair is not in Spain... It's very sad." And fellow agent Maribel Luque adds: "I believe there is a deficit of cultural attention due to political hyperactivity and the media attention it generates. We have lived for many years in a cultural, cosmopolitan, open, diverse, and plural Barcelona that we should not lose sight of or put at risk under any circumstances."
Although Malcolm Otero Barral, grandson of one of the great protagonists of Barcelona's literary golden age, Carlos Barral, believes that perhaps it's not that big of a deal: "the comparison with the 60s and the gauche divine is unfair. That was more a group of friends than the movement of a city itself. Now things are happening in Barcelona and there is a very significant number of authors with great international weight."