By Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief

Cristóbal Pera

Cristóbal Pera, the former Editorial Director of Random House Mondadori Mexico, will will join The Wylie Agency in September 2015 and launch The Wylie Agency España, which marks the agency’s expansion into the Spanish-language markets.

“Cristóbal’s deep knowledge of the Spanish language publishing market, both in Spain and Latin America, and his editorial skills and strong and close connection with authors will be a formidable asset for The Wylie Agency and will help to shape a new course for us within the publishing world,” said Andrew Wylie in a press release.

Pera, who has worked with a range of legendary writers ranging from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Enrique Krauze, earlier told Publishing Perspectives that the major difference between publishing operations in Spain and in Latin America is the lack of a culture of literary agents, particularly in Mexico, where, in what sounds like a throwback to a romantic, idealistic past, writers send their manuscripts directly to publishers, who then sift through the slush pile.

“The big writers [in Mexico] have agents, but once they are consolidated, and those agents are in Europe or the US. Carmen Balcells (who set up an agency in 1956 in Barcelona) was the innovator, seeing the potential for Latin American writers at an international level. But agencies haven’t emerged in Latin America.”

In 2014, Wylie had announced a “memorandum of understanding” to merge with Balcells’ agency and together the agencies would have represented more than 1,000 writers and will represent 13 Nobel Prize winners between them — but it remains unclear how close the organizations have come to completing the endeavor or if it will ever come to pass.