By Emily Williams The ideologically tinged reading initiatives announced by Chávez’s administration in Venezuela have caused alarm and economic hardship among many of the country’s publishers and booksellers, but there is one program — run with government support though not under its full control — that has won praise inside and outside Venezuela. Biblioteca Ayacucho is a 35-year-old publishing foundation …
Global Trade Talk: Russia Over-Publishes, 1M Cool-er Sales, Brazil Book Fair Begins
By Hannah Johnson Publishing Trends reports that the Russian publishers are struggling, not only because of the economy, but also from the effects of over-publishing. Coping with bookstore returns and warehousing the unsold inventory, distributors are having trouble paying publishers, which financially impacts agents and authors as well. The growth of foreign investments in Russia’s publishing sector could mean a …
Global Trade Talk: Author Advances Suffer in the UK; Frankfurt’s Biz Survey
By Edward Nawotka Publishers are cutting author advances by as much as 80% in the UK, reports Benedicte Page in The Bookseller. Clare Alexander of Aitken Alexander said: “For an established author who is not a bestseller, the advance may be down by as much as 50%, or books may not be being bought at all. The decline has been …
Venezuela Strangles Book Imports, Bankrupting Bookstores and Publishers
By Emily Williams CARACAS: In bookstores all over Venezuela the bookshelves are emptying. Readers’ hunger for new and classic titles is as strong as it ever was, but a policy change that the government made over a year ago is gradually choking off the flow of imported books, which make up 80% of the market in Venezuela, resulting, naturally, in …
Bonus Material: El Perro y la Rana, The Venezuelan Government’s Literary Voice
By Emily Williams El Perro y la Rana is the heavyweight champion among the national publishers and booksellers the Venezuelan government has set up with funding from the Cuban government. Established as an “editorial foundation,” it administers an ambitious and growing network of 57 bookstores as well as the National System of Regional Presses, spread across Venezuela’s 24 states. The publishing …
The Summer of Stieg: How Larsson Conquered Spain and Latin America
By Adriana V. Lopez MADRID: This past June, I boarded a plane at Madrid’s Barajas Airport bound for Bogotá, Colombia when I noticed several women on the plane with the same book. When you’ve worked in publishing, and by serendipity spot more than one person reading the same book in a public setting, and in one condensed space, it can …
Weekly Recap: UKs Myebook, Caribbean Fiction, Tokyo Book Fair
Earlier this week Publishing Perspectives offered you stories you’re not likely to read anywhere else. If you missed any of them, please click on any of the links below. And then, if you like what you read, please forward the link to a friend and encourage them to sign up for our daily newsletter. (Read the recap in Chinese and …
Clarice Lispector’s Biographer on the Thrill of the Hunt
By Benjamin Moser UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS — Nobody’s ugly at two a.m., so the t-shirt slogan goes. One evening a few years ago, I was sitting in my Dutch garden, talking to some friends about Clarice Lispector, the Jewish-Brazilian mystic writer. Having recently left the security of my publishing job in order to devote myself full-time to writing, I’d been …
Bonus Material: Don’t You Wish Your Book Fest Was Hot Like Me
By Edward Nawotka Where would you rather hear authors read: In a fluorescent-lit lecture hall in some damp college town or on the beach in Brazil? Known colloquially as FLIP, the Festa Literaria Internacional de Parati has been taking place since 2003 in the colonial seaside town of Paraty – a place so beautiful it is in the running to …
Mexico Deemed Too Dangerous for Novelist to Tour
By Dylan Foley MEXICO: In his new novel Into the Beautiful North, the Mexican-American writer Luis Alberto Urrea has created a satirical tale about three teenage girls who, after seeing a screening of the classic Steve McQueen classic film The Magnificent Seven, leave their small southern Mexican town of Tres Camarones — itself overrun by drug dealers and corrupt cops …