Vom 4. bis 19. Oktober 2008 besuchen 16 Fellows auf Einladung der Frankfurter Buchmesse die Verlagsbranche in Frankfurt, München und Berlin – seit Dienstag dieser Woche sind sie auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse unterwegs. buchmarkt.de stellt Ihnen täglich einen der Teilnehmer vor.
Constanza Brunet leitet den Verlag Marea in Buenos Aires www.editorialmarea.com.ar. Auf dem argentinischen Buchmarkt hat sie es mit einer kleiner werdenden Gruppe von Lesern und einer steigenden Verlagsproduktion zu tun.
buchmarkt.de: Bitte beschreiben Sie uns Ihren Verlag …
Marea is an independent publisher in Argentina that specializes in nonfiction texts, particularly journalistic books.
Historia Urgente, Pasado Imperfecto, Vox Populi and Náufragos (Urgent History, Past Imperfect, Vox Populi and Castaways) are the four collections dealing with genres such as investigative journalism, biography, report, testimony, historical tale, essay and social-themed fiction.
Each of the titles published is distinguished by the quality of its text, the originality and independence of its perspective, and the attention to its editions. The editorial line has a strong commitment with the values of democracy, human rights in general and rights of minorities in particular.
Was sind die Besonderheiten des argentinischen Buchmarkts?
Argentina is one of the largest countries of the world, but paradoxically has a scarce population, we are just 40 millions. A third part of them lives in poverty, that social situation excludes them from the possibility of buying books. And the library system is clearly insufficient.
The rest of the population –affected by decades of dictatorships and economic crises– reads each year a little less. Currently half of the population lacks of any reading habit. This is a serious information in a country like Argentina which has during a considerable period of the twentieth century –at least till 1976 when the last military dictatorship began– very high rate of literacy and the leader publishing industry in Spanish language.
Despite this reduction of the reader market, the production of books is growing every year since 2002, when we overcame the last economic crisis and the retail prices became competitive for the international market. The exportation to other Spanish speaking countries was encouraged by the new exchange rate. A lot of publishing houses have been created since then benefiting the “bibliodiversity” and the cultural production.
This flourishing of publishing in Argentina faces numerous challenges. The main challenge is finding readers for our books. An obstacle is the growing inflation in Argentina, which elevates the retail prices in the internal market –excluding largest groups of the population from the possibility of buying and reading books– and affects the competitiveness of the prices in the international market.
For example, the price of the paper has grown in the last five years more than 300%. Unfortunately, the Government doesn’t have public policies to reduce this asymmetry between production and possibility of commercial distribution through purchases of books for public libraries, national plans for encourage reading, or financial aids for independent publishing houses.
Welche Erwartungen haben Sie an das Fellowship-Programm und die Frankfurter Buchmesse 2008?
The Frankfurt Fellowship Programme is an excellent opportunity to an independent Latin American publisher like Marea because of the contacts and information that it means. It is also a chance to meet many other publishers in the world and learn from their experience.
Assisting to the Frankfurt Book Fair –this is my first visit– will allow us to deepen the international profile towards which we have been working in the last years. From the beginning, Marea dedicated special efforts to make know its catalogue in the world. We export to Latin America and Spain and we had sold author’s right for the translation to different languages.
For example, the book “De Ernesto al Che”, by Carlos “Calica” Ferrer was sold to publishing houses of Germany, Indonesia, Romania, Italy, France, India, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Venezuela and Chile.
We hope this trip will help Marea to continue the creation of good books for readers in the entire world.
Das Fellowship Programm wurde anlässlich des 50. Jubiläums der Frankfurter Buchmesse 1998 ins Leben gerufen. In den vergangenen zehn Jahren hat sich ein enges Netz innerhalb der internationalen Verlagsbranche gebildet. Über 165 Teilnehmer aus 45 Ländern konnten bereits von diesem Programm profitieren. In diesem Jahr wird es von Martina Stemann von der Frankfurter Buchmesse organisiert und vom ehemaligen Fellow Laurenz Bolliger vom Berlin Verlag begleitet.
