From April 25 to May 19, the Buenos Aires Book Fair will be welcoming readers and Spanish-language publishing professionals around the world, seeking, says the Fair’s Executive Director, Gabriela Adamo, “to reassure Argentina’s place as a leading country in the Spanish book industry.” Like every other part of the Spanish-language book industry, Argentina is feeling the effect of Spain’s suffering publishing industry. Add the country’s own high inflation and recent laws making it all but impossible to import books manufactured outside the country, and the situation seems dire.
While no one denies the extreme challenges, there is almost equally universal agreement among Argentinian publishing professionals that their industry is at a more exciting place now than it’s been since Argentina’s literary “golden age,” post-World War II. Despite the economic and legal challenges, many within the industry see specific ways that Argentina could very reasonably “reassure” its place in—and even help reshape—the global Spanish book industry if governmental policies shifted even slightly.
Argentinian book business’ greatest international challenge currently comes from the home front. In autumn 2011, faced with annual rates of inflation over 20% and taking a policy stance of “cultural sovereignty,” the Argentinian government introduced rigorous guidelines for all aspects of international trade. For the book industry, this means strict import quotas on the number of books manufactured outside Argentina and extensive chemical tests to the materials of those books that are imported, along with newly complicated procedures for sending international payments.
While, in theory, the quotas should give Argentinian publishers a fighting chance in the face of cheap imports from Spain, they also place strain on any Argentinian publisher wishing to manufacture outside the country, and on global wholesalers and distributors from non-Spanish-speaking territories as well. Because of the new legal challenges, John Bacon, VP of International Sales at Baker & Taylor, says B&T is “not expecting to see our exports to Argentina grow in the near future.” While Argentina’s own exports have not been directly restricted in the same manner, local inflation rates keep the prices of books manufactured there far from competitive in foreign markets, says Alejandro Katz, Publisher of Katz Editores, resulting in markedly reduced international sales. The policies even affect non-material goods: insofar as transferring money out of the country has been made more difficult, so has Argentinian publishers’ ability to license rights from foreign countries.
The ability to maintain and strengthen global bonds is, undoubtedly, of the greatest concern to all players in Argentina’s book business. Alejandro Katz points out that since Argentina produces 12.5% of Spanish-language titles in the world, extreme import strictures “prevent Argentinians from accessing more than 85% of the titles published in our language every year.” The most harm is likely to be felt in the long term, by limiting the variety and complexity of what’s available on the market. Even without taking into account limited competition and cross-pollination at home, it’s hard to imagine how a new trade policy so extreme it’s prompted an official complaint to the W.T.O. from forty countries—including the US, Canada, and Mexico—is doing anything to help Argentinians compete on the world stage.
Nevertheless, if regulations could be made just a bit less extreme, the current situation could be ripe for positive change. “Fifteen or twenty years ago, the map was completely different, dominated by larger corporate publishers,” says Leonora Djament, Publisher of Eterna Cadencia. Now, while Gabriela Adamo says the country may have become “too chaotic to be a real haven for the large international corporations,” circumstances have nurtured enough new, independent houses to make the period between 2003-2010 what Octavio Kulesz, Director of Editorial Teseo calls “probably one of the greatest publishing booms ever in Argentina.”
For much of the past 20 years or more, the Spanish-language publishing world has undeniably been what Gabriela Adamo wryly calls “Spain’s backyard.” The blow that the world economic crisis has dealt Spain’s book industry, though, presents an “opportunity for Argentina, after many decades of [Spain’s] hegemonic control of the markets of Latin America,” says Alejandro Katz, both in terms of bidding for world language rights and also to produce original titles with “more than a purely local focus.” One particularly serendipitous opportunity has been global interest in the new Pope, which has been keeping Argentinian publishers and agents “frantically busy,” says Agent Irene Barki, and “has been the best opportunity for Argentinian publishing in a long time.” A more general area in which Argentina has been distinguishing itself as a global bellwether, says Leonora Djament, is with “a fabulous translation policy,” harkening back to the first half of the 20th century when Argentina “served as a world pioneer in Spanish-language translations…remember Sartre, Benjamin, Nabokov all got their Spanish-language start in Argentina.” In the area of children’s literature, Argentinian illustrator Isol has drawn global attention also, since being awarded the 2013 Astrid Lindgren Award in March.
There is vocal agreement that Argentina is in an excellent place to take advantage of global changes to Spanish-language publishing—if only its trade laws weren’t so alienating to global partners. Rationalizing the new policy in April 2012, Argentina’s Culture Minister said it gives power to Argentinian publishers and not to “what is decided in the great capitals of the world about the books we read.” Global opportunities are available, but unless international relations are improved, it isn’t so much that “the great capitals of the world” won’t have a say in what Argentinians read as that Argentina’s own books will have a harder time finding a place at the global table.
