MINING IN MEXICO S - ProMéxico

the lifestyle feature Editorial Industry
matched by an equally good commercial
potential. Ultimately, it’s
a business and we are subject to
the same rules as someone selling
grapefruit,” says Rabasa.
Opening its Spanish subsidiary
was one of the most important
steps taken by Sexto Piso. Not only
in terms of expanding the company’s
financial growth but also due
to the need for professionalization
on entering the Spanish market. As Rabasa says, “in Spain there are another
hundred small publishing houses producing impeccable books.”
This required a graphic redesign of their books, a plan to balance out
their collections (novels, short stories, essays, classics and illustrated
books) and the participation, along with other publishers, as part of the
Grupo Contexto, which received a prize from the Spanish government
for the Best Cultural Publishing Work in 2008.
Although the Spanish market is much more competitive, it also offers the
opportunity given the large number of specialized bookstores that enable
their catalog to be on display for longer. If Spain currently reflects 30% of
their total sales, compared to 60% in Mexico and the remainder in South
America, mainly in Argentina and Chile, Rabasa hopes that sales in Spain
will increase over the coming years until they match those in Mexico.
On The Meaning Of Being “Alternative”
Textofilia was the creation of a group of literature students at the Ibero-
American University who began to publish a magazine on literature and
contemporary art. “Unlike other publishers, we had no start-up capital. Our
only investment was our work, our time, and as we were still undergraduate
students I reckon we didn’t start at zero, but from minus ten,” jokes Alfredo
Núñez, editor in chief of Textofilia. It was originally a magazine. But over time
the team grew, it became an almanac and a publishing house was born, beginning
with poems and fragments of text by Anacreon.
Why publish a Greek poet from the sixth-century b.C. “Textofilia
is interested in archaeology through literature, to rescue authors who
unfortunately do not appear in their own special editions, except in
anthologies of classical poetry,” Alfredo Núñez says. It therefore seeks
to be a new alternative in the Mexican publishing industry. “What we
saw was that on an international level people’s taste was being defined
by what was commercially viable
and quick to produce. This
led to a homogenous glut of junk
books or works that sought to
fill a niche and then flooded that
niche,” explains Núñez.
But creating an alternative
selection of works is not the only
requirement when developing
their business. Small publishing
houses have had to diversify in
order to compete. Textofilia, like
other publishers, is now involved
in distribution, which apart from
cutting its own costs, provides extra
income for it to work on other
Diego Rabasa, a partner in Sexto Piso, a
Mexican publishing house that produces
around twenty-five works a year and
exports its catalog to South America and
Spain, believes that the publishing business
gives results over the long term. The keys to
success: quality and consistency.
publications, such as La Tempestad
or Literal- Latin American
Voices magazines, books of the
Fundación del Centro Histórico
de la Ciudad de México publishing
fund or the Diamantine publishers.
They have also teamed
up with other publishers to develop
alternative sales strategies,
such as “evening sales.” On one
occasion, they managed to entice
four thousand people to the Centro
Cultural España.
Small publishers do not have
as many resources to promote authors
or place advertisements in
newspapers but nor do they need
to play the same game as the large
publishers with their constant
search for the new.
Their work involves a slow and
careful process of selecting books
to create a long-term catalog, setting
up independent distribution
networks and buying the rights to
high quality works that have not
been published in Spanish.
It is the quality, rather than the
size, that matters. n