Young writers from Latin America met at the Havana Book Fair to discuss alternative strategies for sharing their work.  Representatives from independent publishing houses in Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Puerto Rico and Argentina discussed the challenges of self-publishing, alternative publishing and Latin America’s innovative cardboard movement. There were no representatives from the English-speaking Caribbean. Don’t worry. CaribLit is already working with the Havana Book Fair to change that. (See our related story on the Alba Narrativa award.) In the meantime, here are the highlights of the Latin American Young Writers’ chat:

New Ideas, Old Materials
Across Latin America the youth voice is largely one of resistance and protest. Many of the publishing projects discussed were born out of social movements. Young people also find it very difficult to get published by traditional publishing houses, which tend to focus on more established, well-known authors. The region’s cardboard movement has been a major outlet for sharing the youth voice. Libros cartoneros (cardboard books), are handmade books, bound in recycled cardboard. They first appeared in Argentina in the early 2000s and have since become popular throughout Latin America. They are published by small, independent presses, sometimes subsidized by the government, with the goal of promoting writing and making literature more accessible. The intent, explains Ecuador’s Freddie Alaya, is not to compete with the traditional book distribution model. “The main interest is political. It’s a way to give an answer to social needs.”

Thinking Beyond the “Book”
Other examples of strategies for sharing young writers’ work in Latin America rest on a re-thinking of the concept of the book. While the ebook market is evolving, young writers are also developing new conceptions of the physical book to appeal to their market. Dario Cemino from Argentina tells of one young writer who released his “book” of poetry like a pack of cigarettes with each poem rolled on a piece of paper. “We work with the book as an object, a work of art, “says Mexico’s Manuel de Jesus. Thinking of the book as an art piece can help to attract attention and reach new audiences.

Creating New Distribution Channels
Getting into traditional bookstore channels can be difficult for young authors, especially those who choose to self-publish. Creating new distribution spaces for books can provide a valuable outlet and help to build and retain an audience. For Argentina’s Dario Cemino, alternative bookstores are an important ally for young writers.

Cemino’s La Libre bookstore carries a diverse range of titles from Argentina’s growing self-publishing community, allowing young writers a space where their voices can be heard and they can create a community.

Cemino also recommends a more human approach to bookselling. While the traditional model of selling books through stores separates the writer from the reader, Cemino notes that many young Argentinian authors take the books directly to the reader, some selling books from their backpacks as they move around the city. Argentina’s Independent Book Fair also gives its young authors an outlet for reaching readers.

It’s Not Just About the Money
While the returns from the projects described may be low, they provide an outlet for young people’s views and allow for books that would otherwise be ignored to be published. Chile’s El Hecho De, for example, published a book of poems from inmates based on winning submissions to prison poetry contest. The books were then made and distributed to the prisoners.

“Young literature [in Latin America] is very political,” says Ecuador’s Freddie Alaya. Alaya notes that for many young writers, the motive is not to generate profit, but to give young people a voice in the political conversations.  “To create change, you have to have social recognition. [Books] create a dialogue between what is marginal and what is official.”

Is there a market for English language books in Cuba? The Caribbean Book Company says yes.

For 14 years, Peter J. Guttridge and his wife have built a business exclusively on the Havana Book Fair. The company sells English-language books at the fair, tapping into the growing interest in English language content. It now represents more than 120 publishers and imprints including all the major UK publishers. For many of these publishers, it’s a chance to sell into a market that they would otherwise not be able to reach.

“The Cuban market can be difficult,” says Guttridge, noting that as the reason for limited competition in English-language books to Cuba. The large audiences (20,000 per day on average over 10 days) make it possible to run a viable business based almost solely on sales at the fair.

“This isn’t a book fair anymore,” says Guttridge. “The Havana Book Fair is the largest Cuban social event of the year – with a book fair inside. It’s a fantastic setting where Cuban families come and [enjoy themselves]. English is the second language here, so we have quite a following year after year. Especially those with children doing English language courses.”

In addition to its direct-to-consumer sales at the fair in February, the Caribbean Book Company sells English-language books in Cuba year-round through its arrangements with local importers, which in turn supply books to bookstores and specialty outlets. The company promotes its catalogs in Cuba and then takes orders.

 “There’s a thirst for books here,” says Guttridge. “After the basics of food, clothing and housing, books come pretty high up.” Guttridge cites the example of a dictionary that sold 5,000 copies in seven days. He notes that children’s books and specialty books on music, arts and the military have also done well.

To get into the Cuban market, Guttridge recommends that Caribbean publishers develop agreements with Cuban importers. 

“It’s not easy, but it’s an interesting market. People forget that this is the largest population in the Caribbean -- 11.2 million people. Plus there are 2.5 to 2.8 million tourists, which can only grow. A lot of them are English-language speakers. There is a huge tourist market that is completely untapped.”

What’s next for the Caribbean Book Company? Gutteredge is looking for an exit strategy. “This is a business we got into by accident,” he says.

“We’d love to find a buyer for it.”

Contact information for the Caribbean Book Company.

The organizers may not be focused on making a profit, but lots of business still gets done at the Havana Book Fair. Many international publishers come to the fair looking to acquire foreign rights to Cuban titles and/or to publish Cuban authors. Bahr estimates that about two thirds of the participating international publishers are selling heavily discounted stock into the Cuban market, while the others are looking for publishing deals and contracts. Here’s what Caribbean publishers need to know:

1.     Interest in Caribbean Culture
In 2012, the Havana Book Fair recognized “the Caribbean” as the country of honour; a generous conceptual definition of the region that swept from Louisiana in the North to Bahia in the South. “Cuba is a Caribbean country, but many of our readers are not familiar with the non-Spanish speaking Caribbean,” says Jesus David Curbelo. “For many of our readers, it was a whole discovery.” Many Caribbean titles were republished for the Cuban market, representing, for many, their first Spanish translations.


2.     Growing English Language Market
Cuba has 20+ universities with a large market for instructional materials. Regulatory changes now permit the licensing of private English-language tutors, also expanding the market for English materials.

3.     Demand in key areas
According to Bahr, there’s strong demand for titles in areas Cuban publishers don’t handle. (It’s worth noting that all of Cuba’s 172 publishing houses are state-run. That places certain limitations on the kinds of books published, which creates opportunities for external publishers to meet.

Bahr says that entertainment books, highly illustrated children’ s books, enhanced books (with CDs, sounds, puppets etc.) tend to do well. Dictionaries and specialized instructional books for professionals are also recommended. Sports books, especially football books, are also popular.


4.     Opportunity for South-South collaboration
The Havana Book Fair is a great place for making contacts both with the Cuban literary and publishing community and the large numbers of international visitors. Havana attracts large representation from South and Central America as well as Africa. Publishers seeking co-publishing arrangements that can’t make the hike to London or Frankfurt can take advantage of the networking possibilities in Havana.

 5.     Price sensitive market
While Cuba’s population of 11 million and its 100% literacy rate might make it attractive, the market is extremely price-sensitive. Local books are heavily subsidized and are deliberately offered to the public at well below the price of printing them. Bahr says it’s not unusual to see kids’ books on sale for less than 0.5 CUC (Cuban convertibles. The exchange rate is 1 CUC: 0.87USD). Foreign publishers are advised to offer deals, as in the example of the kids’ books, three for 5 CUC. Bahr notes that specialized titles can fetch higher prices.

6.     Prize available
The Alba Narrativa Literary Awards is now in its fourth year. The Awards honour works in English and republishes the winning book in Cuba. The Award has been undersubscribed each year. For more information, visit www.cubaliteraria.com.

From its tiny base in Cuba, Ocean Sur Press has generated an impressive catalogue of more than 300 titles in just seven years. A spin-off of the Australian publisher, Ocean Press, Ocean Sur publishes books on Cuban history and politics, including the writings of Che Gevara and Fidel Castro. The company now generates strong sales in Cuba, particularly to the large market of tourists and sells well throughout Latin America, the United Kingdom and the United States. It’s US distribution network now spans more than 2,000 bookstores. It has also been able to parlay its book rights into films including Motorcycle Diaries, the 2004 film directed by Walter Salles and Steven Soderbergh’s 2008 film, Che: The Argentine/Guerilla.

Ocean Sur’s catalogue also includes titles on Latin American thinking, politics and revolution, including books on Chile’s Pablo Neruda and Martinique’s Franz Fanon. The company also publishes books under its Open Memories category, which commemorates the lives of freedom fighters and leading thinkers around the world, such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Helen Keller and Albert Einstein.

Ocean Sur’s Yvonne Muñiz, a former art critic with a background in Caribbean art, thinks there are strong opportunities for publishers from the English-speaking Caribbean to mine the politics and history of the region in similar ways.

“In the Caribbean, you have to work the roots,” says Muniz. “You have to start with the history. You have to go against the many myths that have been imposed on the Caribbean. You usually find information on the beauty of the Caribbean. But behind that there is a history that needs to be written and rewritten.

“We should go back to our first thinkers. The topic of race is very important in our culture. There are histories that have been put into silence. The world is not aware of the cultural richness of our countries in the Caribbean.”

Muñiz thinks that the rise in electronic readers and tablets give Caribbean publishers the opportunity to package new works on history, politics and culture in fresh and interesting ways.

“We live in a world of images,” she says, calling for publishers to integrate major texts with relevant photography and illustrations. “Vernacular architecture, ruins, paintings, traditions, cuisine --  all are attractive to other markets. Colour is important. Covers are important.”

Muñiz notes that maintaining an active, current website and supporting social media platforms is critical for Caribbean publishers who wish to reach the international audience. She also recommends generating a regular newsletter and sending Advance Information sheets to distributors for all new releases.

“Caribbean content sells,” says Muñiz. “Our countries are very much loved by people around the world. There are many niches that have not yet been exploited.”

Translation provided by Vladimir Dominguez. Learn more about Ocean Sur Press.

CaribLit talks to Daniel Garcia Santos, Director of the Latin American Literary Agency

Talk to anyone in the Caribbean publishing industry and the absence of a literary agency is high on their list of challenges. In fact, the creation of a regional literary agency was one of the recommendations that emerged at the first meeting of the Caribbean Literature Action Group in Port of Spain in 2012.

One potential model for what such an agency would look like is the Agencia Literatura Latinoamericana (Latin American Literacy Agency), an arm of the Instituto Cubano del Libro (Cuban Book Institute). It was created in 1985 to represent the rights of Cuban authors. The objectives of the agency are to promote Cuban literature abroad and to represent authors in negotiations with foreign publishers. Cuba has had a national copyright law since 1977 and is a signatory of the copyright conventions of the World Trade Organization.

With a small staff of seven, including four experts in copyright law, promotion and representation, the agency represents the rights of the authors and facilitates the payments of their royalties. It undertakes a year-long programme of activities designed to identify new opportunities for writers – tracking trends in publishing in existing and emerging markets for Spanish-language literature, analysing the catalogues of international publishers and watching their moves to identify those who may be interested in Cuban authors. It develops and maintains the necessary relationships with foreign publishers, introduces new Cuban authors to publishers, negotiates the most advantageous contracts for the authors and manages the payments of their royalties. 

“We maintain relationships with foreign publishers and promote groups of authors according to the genres in which they write,” says Daniel Garcia Santos, the agency’s director. “Once we identify any interest in publishing a certain work in a certain country, we negotiate with the publisher and we protect the authors’ royalties.”

The agency has a promotion catalogue which is disseminated to the international publishing community. While the Havana Book Fair is its major forum for showcasing the work of Cuban authors, it maintains an active presence at international book fairs and promotes different groups of Cuban authors according to the profile of each fair.  “We have a tradition of participating in these fairs so we understand the differences and the interests of each market,” says Garcia Santos. “If we’re going to a fair for the first time, we try to gain some minimum knowledge of the market and then try to select the right authors for that fair. We do promotion in advance so that our attendance is effective.”

Garcia Santos cites as a key example the Frankfurt Book Fair, which he calls a critical space for the promotion of literature and the negotiation of international rights. The agency participates every year.   For Frankfurt, the emphasis is on young Cuban writers who have won literary prizes and received strong critical reviews. For the Guadalajara Book Fair in Mexico, the agency prioritizes the winners of Cuba’s most important writing prizes.  

“Our agency is given top priority, because it is important to the state to promote our literature and protect our authors,” says Garcia Santos. “We try to get contracts which are as beneficial as possible for our authors. When authors negotiate individually with publishers, sometimes the negotiations aren’t as beneficial.”

The agency retains a percentage of the royalties it negotiates for its authors (to a maximum of 15%). What the agency generates over the course of a year depends on the number of contracts it’s able to negotiate, the authors signed and the genres in which they work. Garcia notes that soap opera scripts are a strong income area, generating $30,000 to $40,000 in revenue.

The agency now has a wide network of relationships with international publishers and has built deep institutional knowledge of which areas and markets are most accessible for Cuban literature.

“The international market is very difficult. Inserting yourself and Cuban authors who are not known is very difficult. We work very hard to find areas where we can insert contemporary Cuban authors. Some of our authors are very well known and the requests come. But there are many others that we have to promote.”

Garcia Santos calls for more collaboration between Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Caribbean publishers.  “Sometimes we are a little isolated. We should establish relationships among publishers across the region. We have a common culture. We should have communication channels, systems that allow us to share the knowledge we have of these areas. That’s the only way we have access to these markets which are distant and difficult. Communication is of the essence.”

When asked how other Caribbean islands can follow Cuba’s model for negotiating international rights, Garcia Santos recommends developing a Caribbean organization for driving international promotion and rights sales. “It’s difficult for the author in isolation to access this world. An institution that has a cultural interest and an interest in the promotion of our literature should make the effort.”

Translation provided by Vladimir Dominguez.

Passion meets prose at the Havana International Book Fair – the largest in the Caribbean

The numbers alone are staggering: 140+ exhibits; 100+ events per day; 400 foreign delegates from 40 countries; 11 days of book launches, readings and performances; 12 venues across the city, including the sprawling Cabaña Fortress – a massive 25-acre historic site that serves as the Fair’s hub; on average, more than 20,000 visitors per day.

And that’s just the warm-up. 

When the curtain comes down in Havana on February 24, 11 days of non-stop activity after its Valentine’s Day start, the Fair repeats its combination of book sales and supporting events on a tour through all 14 of Cuba’s provinces, culminating in Santiago de Cuba.

By the time the fair ends in Santiago de Cuba – after 30 days in total -- more than 140,000 books will have been sold and more than 1,000,000 Cubans will have come out for the event.

But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. The Havana Book Fair is a cultural phenomenon. Since its start in the 80s as a biennial book fair, it’s grown into a massive event – annual since 2000 – the largest on the Cuban calendar.

“Everybody [looks forward to] the book fair,” says Aida Bahr of the Instituto del Libro (Cuban Book Institute), the state agency responsible for coordinating the fair. “It’s the cultural event that gets to everyone, everywhere. Most of our books are launched at this time of year for the fair, so it’s a great opportunity to buy new books.

“It’s not just book launches and sales, but a very wide programme of activities: conferences, meetings of librarians and historians, literature and social science conferences. There are meetings with publishers to discuss important issues [as well as] meetings with foreign publishers.”

Every year the fair honours one country and two outstanding Cuban writers – a fiction writer and a social scientist.  The selections influence much of the programming. This year’s honoured country, Angola, brought a delegation of more than 100 writers, performers, academics and cultural representatives to the Fair, to showcase Angolan culture in all its forms and Cuban publishers released 18 new editions of Angolan books for the local market.

It’s the combination of new Cuban books, the opportunity to learn about other cultures and the sheer magnitude of the spectacle that draws the Cuban audience year after year for an event that feels more celebratory than cerebral. 
That’s what the Instituto del Libro and its partner planning agency the Camara del Libro (Chamber of Books) are banking on. (Yes, Cuba has a Chamber of Books, like a Chamber of Commerce; a state run agency to tend to the business of its books.  The Chamber runs logistics for the fair as well as a summer slate of book related activities during the summer holidays and manages Cuba’s participation in international book fairs.) 

“The mission of the Havana Book Fair is to give the people access to books,” explains Bahr. Jesus David Curbelo who coordinates the fair’s mammoth schedule of literary, academic and professional events notes that the mission isn’t necessarily to get people to buy books during the fair. “A lot of people come just to have fun… It’s part of our cultural tradition and [it has made] people very  interested in reading.”

The human and financial resources invested are signfificant -- the organizing committee has more than forty members and  with the staff of the Instituto del Libro and the Camara del Libro, the full team numbers into the hundreds. The budget for domestic expenses alone; i.e. salaries and things that do not have to be imported, run into the millions. But the fair isn’t expected to make a profit.  As with all books published in Cuba, the book fair itself is subsidized by the government, with the long term goal of promoting reading and strengthening Cuban culture. 

“The point of it is to make a cultural investment,” says Bahr. 

“It’s an investment in the people.”

Each year at the Havana Book Fair, young writers from Latin America and the Caribbean are honoured at the Alba Narrativa awards. Since its launch in 2010, the awards have quickly become one of the most attractive awards for Spanish language writers in the region. Over 100 novels are entered each year. 

What’s less known is that the awards are open to English-language writers as well. In the four years of the contest, no English-language entries have been received. Aida Bahr, Caribbean Literature Action Group member and Vice President of Cuba’s Instituto del Libro, is hoping that will change in 2014.

Anyone under 40, born in any country in Latin America and the Caribbean, can enter. The entries must be original and unpublished novels, 120 to 400 pages, and should not be under contract with a publisher, literary agent or be simultaneously entered in another contest.

Entries are due in October of each year, and the winners are announced at the Havana Book Fair, the following February. Winners have their books published and receive USD 10,000 or its equivalent in their local currency. Each year’s winners are invited to the next year’s staging of the Havana Book Fair, where they get a chance to interact with fellow writers from the region at the fair’s Young Writers Conference.

Learn more about the Alba Narrative Awards.