Spanish writer and publisher from Mexico Eduardo Rabasa feels that fragmentation of the book market is not all bad for business and society. A market that is fragmented fosters diversity, while centralisation kills it, he said here on Tuesday. He is in the city to speak at the International Festival of Books and Authors.
He cited the example of Mexico where book publishing and cultural activities are centred on Mexico City. The overriding place of the city in the cultural life of the country has resulted in Mexico City and its citizens being despised by their countrymen at large.
He said that he was not very familiar with the Indian book market but felt that bilingual publishers had great scope in fragmented markets. In Spain, for example, there are successful publishers who bring out books in Spanish and languages like Catalan, he said.
Rabasa, born in Mexico City in 1978, is the founding editorial director of Sexto Piso, Mexico’s prominent independent publishing house, and winner of the 2004 International Young Publisher of the Year Award.
He is known for his political satire A Zero Sum Game, translated from Spanish. Sexto Piso (the sixth floor), the publishing house he launched 16 years ago along with his friends, has forged a success story that can inspire independent publishers elsewhere in the world.
He smiled when asked about the symbolism of the name and the publishing house logo, which shows a person jumping out of the window of a high-rise.
Many considered it suicidal to launch an independent publishing house in a market dominated by big players, he said. The logo and the name were chosen half-jokingly, he added. “All of us who came together for the publishing house venture were young, aged 23 to 24 years. It was decided that the name would be more playful than serious in contrast to the existing publishing scene in Mexico then. We did not know anything about publishing,” he said.
But the business has grown since then, and around 400 titles, most of them translations, have been brought out so far, he added. Sexto Piso, headquartered in Mexico City, has presence in Madrid as well.
Mr. Rabasa said that the Mexican literary scene over the last 15 years had been dominated by the war on drugs, immigration, and subjects related to violence and inequality in Mexican society.
During the war on drugs, more than 1,00,000 people died and over 30,000 disappeared. The war inspired a genre called the Narco Novel, he said, pointing out that young writers like him could not escape the reality of war, migration, inequality, and class and race relations, so that one way or the other, they had become the other themes in recent Mexican writings, he added.
