Despite competition from the well-publicized Miami Book Fair, on November 7, 150 people gathered in New York City at the Millenium Broadway Hotel for the first Association of American Publishers Publishing Latino Voices Conference, where 32 experts offered a crash course on selling books to America's fastest-growing population.
René Alegria, one of the organizers of the event and the editorial director of HarperCollins's Rayo imprint, was impressed with the turnout and the level of interest expressed by participants. He described the conference as "historic" and told PW, "Latinos will drive growth in this industry in the coming years, and here we provide real tools to capture that growth."
Presenters handed out a data mine of information that included breakdowns of the Latino market by Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C. In his report, Suro identified some of the fastest areas of Latino population growth over the past 20 years: Atlanta (955% growth) and Washington, D.C. (346%). He noted that 39% of Latinos are immigrants; 28% are the children of immigrants; and the balance are "third-generation Latinos."
David Schlieker, senior research manager at Nickelodeon, told attendees that by 2025, Latino kids will account for one in four of the total children's market (defined as ages two to 11), up from one in six today. The largest segment of the Hispanic population is under 35 years old, and Hispanics reported about 9.71 hours of daily media time, including TV, radio, print and online, according to Schlieker.
José Raul Pérez, consumer marketing director of People en Español, the Spanish-language edition of People magazine, provided a helpful "cheat-sheet" on how his publication has achieved success within the Spanish-language market, reaching more than four million readers monthly. Among Pérez's tips, summarized in the conference book, he notes that "few stories appeal universally to all Latinos. People uses different covers to target Mexicans & Central Americans in the West, South Americans and Cubans in the Southeast, Puerto Ricans, U.S. born and Dominicans in the Northeast and Puerto Rico."
Pérez echoed co-panelist Max Rodriguez, founder of the Harlem Book Fair and publisher of QBR: The Black Book Review , in warning publishers and booksellers to focus less on language as a unifying element, and more on understanding the shared set of values that drive and define Latinos. And while the majority of Hispanics refer to themselves as such, marketers and the media seem to prefer the Latino moniker. Juana Ponce de Léon, executive director of Estas en Sus Manos, a Spanish-language editorial service, and a former editor at Siete Cuentos/Seven Stories Press, encouraged the audience to aggressively hire Hispanics in all segments of the industry.
AAP v-p Kathryn Blough, who coordinated the conference, said, "We had two goals for this conference—to educate the industry about this segment and to raise the profile of Latino publishing. I feel we certainly met both." She noted that the AAP was encouraged by the attendance and that the conference may be held annually in different cities. The presentations have been documented in a conference book that is available through the AAP.
"The Latino Voices committee will meet again before year-end," said Blough, "to make plans for continuing this effort at BEA and with other events. Certainly, our work is not done."
Esdaille is a freelance journalist in New York City.
