For the halls of the fair it is commented. What is said. Several things: discreet sales but in ascent, many people but not too much, an end of the eternal month, a holiday that rebules, a wheel that turns slow but does not stop. At this point, the 49th edition of the International Book Fair of Buenos Aires is halfway. The balance sheets open on the march. Numbers, sensations, expectations.
From the El Book Foundation they explain that this weekend the trend was shot: on May 1, worker’s day, with many newly deposited salaries, the number of people who went to the Book Fair is 32% more than May 1 last year. “We carry in income 20% and we will estimate to close the fair with 20% against last year. We are exceeding expectations,” they tell Infobae Culture.
Hernán López WinneEditor of Godot – collective stand: Meeting, 1720, Yellow Pavilion, along with Sigilo, Chai, Musical Gourmet and the Damn Part – says that “May 1 was sold much better than last year”, that sales to the public are 10% more compared to 2024, in the same period of time, and what they lowered are the professional days, sales to libraries, libraries
Penguin Random House has been selling 20% more than last year. Valeria Fernández Nayadirector of marketing and commercial, highlights the professional days, which “have been a success and so far make a big difference”, and “this weekend the fair is full of families, young people and children”, with a great call for talks, interviews and signatures of books of the bestsellers.
From the Editorial Planeta group they report 15% more; of the Unaluna seal, of the Clarity Group, 25% more. On Thursday “he exploded, click,” he said Ezequiel MartínezDirector of the Book Fair in Infobae streaming. “On the first Saturday of the fair, which after 20:30 enters free and is the only day that is until midnight, we had 10% more people than last year,” he said.
“We are seeing that the fair, luckily, is taking up the course,” he says Juan Manuel PampínPresident of the Argentine Chamber of the Book, on the other side of the phone. “In the stand we go 25% more than last year in specimens,” he adds about the space occupied by the cal in the blue pavilion where 19 publishers exhibit more than a thousand titles. While “the first days were a little colder,” this weekend changed.
“Now, with the long weekend, many people are really being seen,” and clarifies: “Many people do not imply many sales. It is many people walking, but the fact that the public accompanies is good.” Pampín, which also directs the corregidor label, remarks that “the fair is not an island”: “Let’s think that 50% of the population is under the poverty line. Within that context, people are equally responding.”
“For Detima Editions, the fair is an opportunity to exhibit the catalog and reach the public with the presence of our authors, especially in the current conditions, in which sales have lowered a lot,” says the editor of the seal, Graciela Scarlatto. “This year we are in the collective stand of the CAL and we have scheduled three events. The fair is a luxury window and an occasion of approach with the book industry.”
“I am seeing this edition with less stands, with fewer people, for the moment, and also, for what they tell me, with discreet sales.” The one who speaks is Enzo Maqueiraauthor and member of the union of writers and writers. “It reflects very well what is happening at the country level with the fall of consumption. But like last year, I see a lot of people in the tables and in the talks,” he adds.
“That is a phenomenon of now, of recent years, because before perhaps there were not so many people to the talks. Now,” and continues: “It is seen that people want to absorb knowledge, debate, thought and all that is missing a lot outside the book Fair, in everyday reality. An avidity by reflection, for depth, for leaving the banality of evil in which we are immersed in our day to day.”
“The books, always, somehow, call,” he says Julieta Bottojournalist and editor of the Cielo de Fecas label, whose catalog is in the Stand 1400 of the city government: cultural impulse. Regarding the previous editions, he perceives less public: “A thermometer of that is the ease of traveling, when entering the time of moving inside the pavilions.”
“Chatting with known people, the general discourse is that it is a fairly poor edition in terms of concurrence and in terms of sales. As far as I am concerned, I still do not know how much it has been sold because it is settled at the end of the fair,” he says and adds: “Even having had the opportunity to attend a talk, I was surprised that there were no kilometer queues for the entrance to the rooms.”
During the days of April, to Nicolas Bendersky From IPS editions the fair came “very much at the end of the month, in addition to the bad economic situation.” But with the worker’s day holiday, the beginning of the month – very employees have already charged – and this weekend, the matter “rebounded”: “There are more people linked to the provinces that perhaps came to walk. That rebound of people who are looking a little in sales.”
“For our part, since IPS editions we maintain economic prices according to popular pockets and we try to make this an obstacle to those who are interested in acquiring our books and knowing the Marxist ideas,” adds this editor, teacher and political scientist, who among the titles they are presenting is Ecomunism: Defend life. Destroy the system of Andrés petruccher.
“The book fair gets less and less exciting,” says the writer Diego Cano With brutal honesty. “I see that the concentration space of the great publishers and bookstores is increasingly developed and there is less place for independent publishers that, as we know, there is a huge diversity of editors and authors that in the book fair is almost impossible to find them,” he says.
The postcard compares it with the Editors Fair where “there is a mosaic of authors and editors and infinity. That diversity at the Book Fair is less and less. You can find those things, but the truth is that it is almost impossible. It seems to me that it is increasingly focused and more at the service of the great publishers, which can pay a stand, the marketing, the advertising, everything.
“I keep going because I always find something that I did not know that it existed or because there are news that are first at the fair than in bookstores,” he says and adds that “the stands of the countries, such as Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, unfortunately bring very little titles.” “It becomes more and more a mass cultural walk than an expression of the diversity and creativity that the Argentine publishing world has,” he closes.
Ignacio Portela South American, which has two stands, says that “until Thursday it had been a much smaller fair than other years, but this weekend he raised a lot,” and notes that he influenced “the promotion of the Province Bank, as a spearhead.” Add Juan Manuel Pampín: “It is very feasible that the numbers improve this weekend. Surely that replies in sales.”
Due to the difficult general economic situation of the country, Portela concludes, “the spirits of booksellers generally pull down, but everyone was waiting for an austere fair, with less circulation of people. But this weekend there was an important comeback. And although the greatest inconvenience is that many people ask and not everyone buy, luckily the public is answering.”
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