Last week I traveled to the Guadalajara Book Fair, one of the largest book fairs in the world and the largest in Latin America from what I've heard. I attended a number of events and looked around the entire grounds, but only in Guadalajara for four out of nine days of the fair.
I did this with a specific purpose in mind. As an Evangelical Christian who writes science fiction and fantasy, who speaks Spanish and French proficiently and who has a Mexican wife, I was looking at the prospects of selling Christian-themed speculative fiction in Latin America. Some things I wanted to know included:
1. Are any Christian publishers already selling speculative fiction in Latin America?
2. Is any speculative fiction being sold at all at the fair? And if so, by which authors? Published by whom?
3. Factor X. What might I learn at the fair that I don't even know could be possible?
Probably I spent the most time on point number 2. I don't know how many books were on sale at the fair, but the number was massive. I did not see every book, but I did go to every store and look around for science fiction and fantasy and/or horror, a.k.a. "speculative fiction." Since I hoped to find a Latin American publisher for translations of stories I have either written or edited, I thought it would be great to see if any publishers in the Latin American world were already producing speculative fiction.
To my distress as I walked around the fair, while I kept seeing speculative fiction for sale, MOST of it was either in English from United States book publishers...or translated into Spanish, still published by US Publishers. Since getting backing by major US publishers like Harper Collins or Penguin Random House is rather hard, I had been hoping a Latin American publisher would be easier to access. I also saw a bit of UK and German speculative fiction (these countries were well represented at the fair), but not did not encounter a single publisher FROM Latin America who publishes speculative fiction, with the exception of literature for young children. (A partial exception to that is one publishing house from Brazil which publishes a number of fiction genres, including some speculative fiction.)
By the way, the things most in view by the US publishers were works of fiction tied to American movies or TV series. Some American comic book translations were around (both Marvel and DC), Game of Thrones (and other G.R.R Martin books), Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars. Some Divergent and Hunger Games, too. In horror books, almost exclusively Stephen King.
I finally found a genuinely Mexican-owned establishment which carried a significant amount of speculative fiction. All was under the title of "ciencia ficcion" by the way, marking that term as their roll-up catch-all for speculative fiction, which surprised me. They had, like others, G.R.R Martin, but not much else fantasy. But they did have some classic science fiction, some not carried at the book fair by the American publishers (as far as I saw)--Arthur C. Clark and Ray Bradbury among them. They had Stephen King like the US publishers, but also Anne Rice. A LOT of Anne Rice. But no Harry Potter that I saw and no Star Wars.
So I drew a conclusion from what I saw that it may be the case that this Mexican establishment carries science fiction to compete with US-owned publishers but carries authors for whom exclusive contracts do not exist. Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, but if it is true that this company is searching for lesser-known books to compete with the "big boys," it may represent an opportunity. Maybe they would be willing to give books a try that other bookstores would not.
Oh, by the way, the Mexican company I'm taking about is not primarily a publisher, though I think they do publish some books. It's a bookstore chain, one called "Ediciones B." I plan to contact them in the near future, but I may have to do so as a publisher in order to have books distributed rather than as an author/editor.
Circling around to my point 1, I saw very few Christian publishers at the book fair at all. Tyndale was there selling Bibles, as were the "Sociedades Unidas Biblicas." But there were no other Evangelical publishers there at all, even though Mexico has some (I found out at least one was hit hard in the earthquake not that long ago south of Mexico City, and that's why they were not there). I did see some Catholic publishers, but they hardly carried any fiction at all. Some for kids and some classics, but they mostly had non-fiction.
By the way, I don't know what the proportion of fiction to non-fiction would be at a book fair in the United States, Canada, or Europe, but non-fiction was HUGE at the Guadalajara Fair. Clearly a lot more non-fiction sells in Latin America than fiction. A lot was religious, not just the Catholic versions, but I also saw plenty of New Age books, plenty of tarot and mysticism and that kind of thing. (And in the category of fiction that makes non-fiction claims, I also saw plenty of Dan Brown books.) The dominance of non-fiction was a bit surprising for me, but what I saw may mean I should write more non-fiction--IF reaching the Latin American market really matters to me (which I would say it does).
As for my point 3, yes, I found some surprises. A couple of things I found that I did not expect are not too surprising in retrospect. I found some e-book and audio book distributors looking for clients. It seems both formats are growing massively in Latin America. But a surprise factor was that several of these companies have English names, including Inkit, a Mexican e-book formatting and distribution company and Storytel.es, a Swedish audiobook company with a presence based in Spain. (It seems a name in English has the feeling of "tech" all over it in the Spanish-speaking world.)
The biggest surprise was I found some governments and non-government organizations are actively seeking to promote the national literature of their countries and as a result are willing to pay for translations to and from various languages. The Sharjah Book Fair of the United Arab Emirates is especially interested in translating books to and from Arabic, something I would like to apply for concerning my books. And New Zealand is looking to fund translations of NZ books into Spanish--so I am going to see if, God willing, I can arrange the translation of some books from my friend Grace Bridges at Splashdown Books in New Zealand into Spanish or possibly Portuguese, with New Zealand footing the bill. And Argentina is funding translations of Argentine authors into English, a task which I'm capable of performing myself and would not mind getting paid to do, assuming I can find some Argentine speculative fiction I would like to publish.
So overall, the experience at the Guadalajara Book Fair was a good one. I learned some important things and found a few new opportunities I'd never thought of.
Got any questions or comments for me on this topic? Feel free to leave them in the comments section below. :)
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