Full halls, full recitals, full talks. People, people, people, like the ones we are used to seeing at the Buenos Aires Book Fair. This year, given the crisis and the cost of admission – 3,500 pesos a week, 5,000 on Saturdays and Sundays – there was some fear that this photo could not be taken. But this Saturday the literary exhibition opened its doors freely from 8 p.m. to 12 p.m. for City Night, sponsored by the Buenos Aires government. The Fair exploded and that made me rethink some things. Why not have more free schedules?
Although it is not yet defined, what they are thinking about is enabling free entry for a few hours a few days a week. What, what hours? Nothing is defined but the objective of the Fair, in addition to being cultural, is commercial and if there are more people there will be more sales. In a difficult year – an average new novel costs 20,000 pesos – all help is valued.
Alejandro Vaccarothe president of the El Libro Foundation – the entity that organizes the Fair – explained the idea to Infobae: “Well, last night there really was a significant explosion of people at the Fair. In general, the first Saturday is always the one with the least amount of people, for obvious reasons, the Fair has just begun and the diffusion is taking shape as the days go by. Without a doubt, an important factor, attractive to the public, is that starting at eight p.m. Admission was free.”.
The president of the Foundation -who is also the head of the Argentine Society of Writers (SADE)- says that, from the organization, they drew conclusions: “That in some way marks a need for us to, given the socioeconomic crisis that the country lives, it may be attractive to have some rehearsal of this nature during this Fair. So we are looking at the possibility of repeat that experience. So we are very optimistic, very optimistic on sales. In terms of entries, we have very similar numbers to last year, but with an unprecedented crisis. So we are really optimistic.”
(News in development)
