Seventy-six-year-old Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez has set another milestone for Spanish-language publishing in the U.S. His first new work of fiction in a decade, Memoria de mis putas tristes (roughly translated in English as Memories of My Melancholy Whores) sold twice as fast in its first two weeks as his bestselling autobiography, Vivir para contarla (Living to Tell the Tale), did in 2002.
The new novella—which will be published in English by Knopf next fall in a translation by Edith Grossman—was released in Puerto Rico on October 22 and in the U.S. on October 25 in simultaneous hardcover and paperback Spanish editions. But demand has been so strong that Random House has gone back to press three times for each of the two editions, bringing the total in print for Vintage Español's $10.95 trade paperback to 100,000 copies and Knopf's $17.95 hardcover to 25,000 copies.
Knopf publisher Sonny Mehta proclaimed Memorias "the fastest-selling Spanish-language book in the history of Random House. Currently, the book is also the fourth bestselling Knopf group title at Barnes & Noble—a significant feat given how little publicity the book has received in the mainstream media. The short novel, which is centered on a writer's wish to deflower an adolescent virgin on his 90th birthday, sold more than 400,000 copies around the world in its first week.
Like the publication of Vivir para contarla, the novel's release came with a few surprises. Previously, Knopf lost thousands of sales for the author's autobiography because illegally imported foreign editions were readily available to his fans in the U.S. To avoid that mistake, the house joined forces with García Márquez's agent, Carmen Balcells, and the book's other Spanish-language publishers for what was originally a worldwide release on October 27. But when pirated editions of Memoria began showing up on the streets in Colombia on October 18, his publishers around the world, including Knopf, pushed up their pub date by a week. The Knopf group also made certain the U.S. editions would maintain a competitive edge by offering low-priced editions, said Vintage publisher Anne Messitte.
The release of Memorias involves the house's most ambitious marketing strategy yet for a Spanish-language title. It has included ads in major Spanish- and English-language publications and the distribution of 600 retail displays that include 12 paperback and four hardcover copies of Memorias.Borders's Spanish-language buyer, Aaron Feit, said that the title is doing extremely well at the chain in both editions, despite the lack of media attention.
To date, the Los Angeles Times is the only major paper to weigh in on the novella, with a positive review that ran October 26, though Mehta hopes more coverage will follow. Though he admitted that it is a challenge to get a Spanish-language book covered in an English-dominant market, he is determined to serve Spanish readers. "It's a significant new readership available to us as publishers, and one which has gradually been dawning on our industry for a period of time," he said. "We didn't just wake up to it yesterday."
Though he is fighting cancer, García Márquez is at work on the second volume of his memoirs and on another novella, En agosto nos vemos (We'll See Each Other in August).
