The mexican publishing, on the brink of suffocation

“A complex time”. “A year very, very hard.” “The worst of our existence.” The mexican publishing independent are on the verge of asphyxiation because their main ball oxygen has been deflating. The State has assumed, historically, the role of the first and great buyer of books, but during the last few years has been stepping on the brake. The outgoing Government of the PRI had been reduced during the six year period of financing to the publishing world, isolate it until nearly the bankruptcy to the public network of libraries, strangling a medullary canal for publishers without mattress multinational and stripping the structural problem: the fragility of an industry dependent on public money, geared to the educational books subsidized, without muscle exporter or incentives for private investment.

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For the Sixth Floor, the editorial's largest independent invoice with 25 million pesos ($1.2 million), this has been the year more hard since they managed to make it profitable to the project, back in 2005. “Very, very hard because there was little to exercise budget, the libraries lost a lot with the earthquake (September 2017), to which must be added the dramatic rate of bookstores per capita in the country and that stopped all the programs of stimulus of the book”, pointing to Diego Rabasa, founder of the publishing house.

The governmental sales lead falling gradually since the start of the six-year period of pri. Of the border 2012 and until 2016, the latest data available from the employers ' editorial mexicana (Caniem), the crop has been 42%. Despite the crash, still represent in the total sales volume nearly a third, over libraries and schools. The map of the libraries, another of the demands of chronic industry, is scarce and nothing is proportional. Are about 500 in a country of 130 million and are concentrated in large cities: 94 percent of mexican municipalities do not have where compare books.

In this landscape full of clouds, the if bleeding is the of Educal, a public company that was born with the objective precisely to compensate for the deficit in private and extend the network of libraries for the republic. Are currently 82 facilities, a distribution network is key for small publishers. But the transmission belt is broken. To the Sixth Floor, he should of 700,000 pesos. The debt with other publishers, who preferred not to give his name, ranges between 40,000 and 400,000 pesos. So until you have a negative balance with suppliers accrued 33.7 million, according to an internal document Jestbahis which has had access THE COUNTRY.

The address of Educal arises, according to the same document, take the closure half of its libraries in case you do not get more funding from the new Government. Sources in the company have declined to make statements, claiming that they are negotiating an exit of survival with the new Government, which has recently flirted with the idea of merging Educal with the aircraft carrier editorial of the Economic Culture Fund (FCE), on whose network of libraries also plan to criticism for delays in payments. The situation of Educal is much more limit. The debt to suppliers is virtually eat the entire budget of this past year, 48 million, a figure that has been declining strongly since the entry of the PRI. The last great game was in 2012, with 484 million. And that ball of oxygen had trick. Was inflated with another of the conduits of public support to the book: the library programs and schools.

The basic education books are the most sold in the country, representing 43% of the specimens, more than half purchased by the Government. In addition, the Secretariat Teaching takes years to lead a side-project of purchase to the publishers through contests of textbooks not necessarily text. Another lever is also on the decline. “Before you, with five books per year and you saved the exercise. Could mean more than 80% of the revenues,” points out Deborah Holtz, a veteran editor at the front of Trilce, with 16 years of career. “If they stop the shopping public, there is nothing. We do not have means of financing. We are in danger of extinction, and almost no edit. We've gone from 15 to 6 books a year”.

Almadia, another large independent, remember that these educational programs helped them to take off in 2008, when they bought more than 100,000 copies of a single book. “It helped a lot but it is on a downward trend, which has made us separate ourselves from that channel and strengthen the distribution in liberarías private. Despite all of this, is being in year complex,” says director Guillermo Quijas.

public libraries —Educal and FCE— have come to represent at least 30% of the turnover of independent publishing. Are among their top five customers. When you add the additional programs, the State used to become the first buyer. The other of these levers, the program edits the Culture Secretary, has also been reduced. The publishers claim that they have gone from three games to one in the last years. From the area responsible for the programme, the Directorate General of posts (DGP), its director, Marina Núñez, argues that “in 2017 if fell a lot of the budget, as in other programs, but this year it is more the case that with the same resources feed other program”.

The PGD is another of the organisms that are in the air before a possible merging of dependencies on the part of the new Government. “The problem there is that tackle is a little deep, which is the market to have as much weight in public”, says Tomas Granados, director of a new editorial Grain of Salt, dedicated, essentially, to academic books aimed at universities. Between the notes most repeated of the publishers are in the implementation of the law of the book, with sanctions for those who skip the single price, impulses to private investment via tax benefits as in other industry such as film, or the boost to exports that hardly amounts to 7% of the total turnover of the second largest market of Latin america.