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Publishers Weekly International

Spain's Small Miracles
Gwendolyn Alston, Herbert R. Lottman -- 8/15/98

The view from Madrid on how independent presses face the industry giants, compete and succeed in a fast-growing international market.

They are not chasing windmills, but almost. In a country of over 3,000 registered publishers, only approximately 10% are really moving the industry. There are only about 20 major players, and they are all centered in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain's publishing capitals.

Faced with a saturated market, the biggest players are very much multinational. With most of the Spanish speaking world NOT in Spain, but in the Americas, it is no wonder that Planeta, the trade leader with sales in 1997 over $1 billion, has 68 separate companies scattered around the world. With authors like John Grisham, Tom Clancy and Barbara Taylor Bradford, they are the major house of authors originating in Spanish, too.

Plaza y Janes, their main competitor, is the Bertelsmann trade imprint for Spain. (Bertelsmann also owns two upmarket houses, Debate and Lumen.) Of 40 new titles in fiction at PyJ, half will be translations, including Stephen King and Michael Crichton. They have 30% of the paperback market in Spain, including Garcia Marquez, who is published in hardcover by Grijalbo-Mondadori.

Ediciones B, part of Spain's powerful press and magazine group, Zeta, was set up precisely to challenge the likes of Plaza Y Janes in commercial fiction. They have also made a big dent in the children's market in their decade long history, and last year bought the major Argentine trade book house, Javier Vergara, with one of the best distribution systems in Latin America. There are over 300 new books a year, 70% of them translations and one-third juveniles.

Grijalbo-Mondadori is the last of the majors in trade books in Spain, a combined effort of Grijalbo, founded in Mexico by a Spaniard distancing himself from Franco's fascism and the number one Italian publishing group.

With a market dominated by such multinationals, including in addition to the above in Barcelona, Grupo Anaya and Santillana in Madrid, how do smaller, independent publishers manage not just to keep afloat but to prosper and grow?

The approach varies, but over recent years independent presses, on the whole specializing in academic and technical books, have expanded their market both at home and abroad. Recent examples are Paraninfo's absorption by International Thomson Publishing and Oceano's joint venture with Germany's Langenscheidt.

The flamboyant new sales director at ITP/Paraninfo, Jaime Lucia, previously sales director of Grijalbo/Mondadori, explains the reasons for the purchase of Paraninfo by the North American company.

"Paraninfo has made a significant profit in its 35 years of operation. It is the most important company in Spain publishing vocational training materials, at low cost and with possibilities of expansion into the Latin American countries."

According to Lucla, ITP was looking to set up a base in Spain and wanted a stable high-turnover company, one that could continue functioning independently. Among plans for the new merger company is a shift in the target market by adjusting texts and adding some ITP titles translated into Spanish, as well as publications in English.

The company expects to target a higher bracket of professionals interested in high-quality computer, business management and training books, in Spain and beyond.

"Before the sale three years ago," Lucia says, "Paraninfo had exclusive distributors, primarily in Mexico and Argentina. Now, there are ITP delegations to work within these countries. That will make all the transactions smoother and more direct."

Overall, according to Lucia, the company expects a 40% increase in sales in the next year.

The Oceano-Langenscheidt venture has similar intentions in the Latin American market. In fact, Oceano, a name which d s not often appear in local industry journals in Spain, is at present one of the strongest independent presses in the Spanish market and a market leader in Latin America.

With proven knowledge of the Spanish-speaking markets and a strong distribution network on both sides of the ocean, the imprint boasts a wide variety of publications, ranging from dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference books, books for children and young adults, as well as scientific, technical and art books.

Langenscheidt's contributions are its high-quality and easily recognizable yellow and blue language dictionaries and reference books. Andreas Langenscheidt, the company president, has a basic philosophy, curiosity is the basis of innovation.

According to an interview published recently in Delibros, the leading industry journal in Spain, the ambitious Oceano-Langenscheidt team intends to publish no less than 70 new titles this year.

But what are independent companies doing that are not merging with larger companies or setting up joint ventures? One has to be a little quixotic to keep going in a business where, as in Spain, there is so much competition and demand is tight. For this reason, five publishers whose focus is similar yet whose lists are not directly competitive, got together to form Pr me, a marketing, promotion and export company that represents them all as a group.

Pr me will promote their books, negotiate rights and consolidate sales and shipments abroad for a list of almost 5000 titles. Of the five, Castalia is one of the veterans. Founded in Valencia in 1945 publishing elegant up-scale books for bibliophiles, in 1963 the company moved to Madrid and shifted its selection to offer the collections that are now the company trademark: Clasico Castalia, small paperback-style books featuring Spanish annotated classics and literary criticism.

"Our market niche is very defined, and we have stuck to it," says Federico Ibs z, the company president. "Our sales abroad are becoming more and more an important part of our strategy, especially in Latin America. The United States is already a significant market for us; 57% of our export sales go there, to libraries, universities and specialty bookstores."

The internet has meant a breakthrough for Castalia, too.

"Since we set up our web page, sales abroad have been on the rise," he explains. "The best of it is that we can reach the most remote areas of the world, providing customers with books at competitive prices and making direct sales with credit card payments. "

"The internet is an incredible boost for independent presses who want to reach a wider market. It means being able to provide maximum information at minimum risk."

Along with his responsibilities at Castalia, Ibs z acts as president of CEDRO, the organization established by publishers to protect copyrights. With a total of 3,100 publisher and author members, this institution is now in its tenth year, principally fighting photocopy abuse, an activity which has been on the rise over the years, especially among university students, and which d s significant damage to industry sales.

Gredos is another veteran of the group, also with over 50 years in the industry. The company is run by the four children of each of the four founders, all of whom had chairs in Classical Philology at different Spanish universities. Isabel Calonge, one of the four, explains.

"Almost from the very beginning, we have had three main lines of publications: translations and studies from the Greek and Latin and other Classical studies; a collection of Romance Philology and our dictionary series," explains Calonge.

Their Diccionario Maria Moliner is practically a household name among students of Spanish and comes now in a CD-ROM version. The hallmark style of Gredos dresses books in distinctive sepia-colored paperback covers, using authors that are highly acclaimed intellectuals. They do a growing number of translations, now 30% of the list, negotiating rights on a regular basis with English and US presses.

Sintesis is another Spanish press in the group working with new technologies. Though Francisco Belloso has eschewed publishing on CD-ROM, wary of the real profitability of this medium, he is enthusiastic about the possibilities of marketing and sales via the internet.

This 12-year-old press has seen an incredible growth in the last five years, and established itself as one of the leading academic and technical publishers in the country. With 100 new titles a year, the house handles over 26 different collections, ranging from literary theory to engineering, catering mainly to the university market. Expanded sales initiatives promote books directly to the professionals in different fields, too.

Sintesis' success is based in large part on its close relationship with the research community in Spain, but Editorial Direct Alfredo Molina says he is always on the lookout for US, German or English textbooks that can make their mark in Spanish translation.

For Trotta, a publishing house established in 1990, the translation factor works both ways. Specializing in the humanities, including law, Semitic studies and philosophy, they translate books from languages such as Hebrew and Arabic and then sells the rights to translations from Spanish into other European languages. According to Alejandro Sierra, the company president, about 20% of the books they publish are translations. Their upcoming Encyclopedia of Philosophy, whose authors are from Spain and several of the Latin American countries, reaches a broad international arena.

The smallest company of the Pr me group, Nerea, is staffed and run by four young women, all with publishing backgrounds. Marta Casares, the company president, explains, "We started out in 1988 with the idea of providing a discerning public with a collection of beaux livres; not exactly coffee-table books, but glossy, well-written books on history, art and architecture."

Awarded a national prize for their title, Felipe II, Mecenas de Las Artes (Felipe II, Patron of the Arts) by the now Director of the Prado Museum, Fernando Checa, in 1993, Casares maintains a high level of quality, though they still plan to publish 15 new titles this year.

"It is clear to us that the best option for reaching a more international community is through co-editions," she says. And the magic word on everybody's lips is "export."

The Spanish publishers have their eye first on Latin America, with the US a safe second, as the Hispanic population in the US becomes more of a driving force in the overall economy.

"Now is the best moment for expansion into the Americas," says Juan Mateos, the man behind Pr me. "Economies are stable and growing there, especially in countries such as Chile, Mexico and Argentina. And demand for new materials is high, as the general population becomes more affluent and more young people go on to university. The geographical space itself is so large, as well as the populations, that there is plenty of room for everyone to try to make a sale."

The Spanish publishing industry is also at a good moment in its development. With independent presses like those cited here becoming more assertive and honing their promotional skills, their size is a distinct advantage. An average staff of 10-15 people means a closer attention to detail and a dynamism that larger, more complacent companies may lack.

This dynamism has translated into more rights agreements with US and UK publishers, too. According to Raquel de la Concha, a literary agent based in Madrid, "The publishers here are very selective. Although a good number of fiction titles are being translated from English, publishers are more interested in quality narrative. "

"Genre fiction, like fantasy, science fiction and detective novels have gone by the wayside and are being replaced by more high-toned narrative and nonfiction titles."

While narrative, University and technical books are taking off in Spain, in Latin America the demand is for New Age, business, child care and how-to books. "Each market is different," Concha explains. "One cannot talk about vying for world Spanish rights since the readership in the different countries varies so much. What will sell well in Mexico City may just sit on the shelf in Madrid. What is clear, however, is that the demand is growing for niche and nonfiction titles."

Carmen Balcells and Mercedes Casanovas, two other major agents, concur. At all agencies, splitting rights is now current practice. "Every case is different," says Gloria Gutierez at Carmen Balcells. "We do try to split when we can, but then it has to be a thorough job, not leaving parts of Latin America uncovered."

The active presence of Spanish publishers is nothing new to Latin America. Some of Spain's major players, like Planeta, Santillana, Plaza & Janes and Ediciones B are well established in Argentina and Mexico. (While some Latin Americans have successfully established themselves in Spain.) Now the smaller Spanish presses want to get their hand in, which is why representatives like Pr me are helpful.

English Language Titles in Spain

When it comes to imports of English-language titles into Spain, on the other hand, demand has slackened in the 90s. The rush for books in English peaked in the 1980s when teenagers were being sent to the UK and US to study, business executives knew that one of the only ways to get promoted was to speak English and most job offers required at least a working knowledge of the language. However, the import of books in English dropped 6% between 1996 and 1997.

Now, the demand for English language teaching materials is significantly lower, while the purchases of popular fiction have risen -- in both languages. According to Javier Espinelli, vice-managing director of Comercial Atheneum, one of Spain's principal importers of English-language titles, mass market titles in English, although they are selling well, are now meeting with a more serious competition.

"Sales have dropped, or have peaked, primarily because Spanish publishers are becoming more aggressive in their publishing strategies," Espinelli states. "Now, the Spanish translation of mass market titles is available at the same time as the imported English-language original, in hardback or paperback editions according to the Spanish publisher's whim."

According to Espinelli, the majority of sales for the titles his company imports are centered more in coastal areas, where there is a greater concentration of tourists and English language readers who have moved to Spain.

In urban centers, like Madrid and Barcelona, readers turn to a variety of other materials, particularly the evergrowing constellation of new Spanish authors. There is more highbrow literature in translation read in these centres, and sales of popular fiction in English are significantly lower.
See a list of Publishing Resources in Spain.

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