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Written by Octavio Kulesz
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Thursday, 11 September 2008 00:00 |
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In September, Octavio Kulesz was interviewed on an article about Spanish-language publishing, particularly in Argentina. It's in Spanish, but for English-speaking readers here's the intro translated:
What is the situation of the publishing industry today? — The traditional publishing industry is currently living through a deep crisis. This is happening everywhere, but in our country it is particularly evident. The public, probably due to the large amount of information they are able to find on the web, become much more interested in specific issues than they were a few years ago. This leads to a demand structured in niches, rather than in uniform audiences. The problem is that in order to reach these fragmented demand, publishers feel the need to deliver more and more titles, which implies huge amounts of extra copies, because they still use the offset technology. Physical bookstores receive this increasing flow and are forced to speed up the rotation of copies in tables and shelves; at a certain point they need to give them back to the publisher, who is also suffering from the lack of space and must sell the copies at a low price or simply distroy them. That is how after a few months a good book ends up sold out. Therefore, we are experiencing a crisis of overproduction: too many copies are produced, and this problem can only be overcome by using digital technology in the whole book chain.
Read the rest of the interview in Spanish here.
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