The novel asks for paper. The essay requires paper. Poetry, above all, requires paper. Its touch, its aroma, the ease of use, without the need for plugs, cables, batteries, screens…, nor all those things that make up the impediment of some contemporary readers. That is the secret, among others, that a small label like Bartleby Editores has added and continued, against all odds, 26 years of existence, since 1998 when Pepo Paz, Carlos Cabrera and Dionisio Rodríguez Mesa founded it. That is what, among other things, the current editorial director of Bartleby, Pepo Paz (Madrid, 1962), thinks, who today shares with Manuel Rico, as director of the poetry collection, the responsibility of this catalog that exceeds two hundred living titles. Of all the possible models of editor, Pepo Paz fits into that of editor-writer. Since they did not let him study Journalism on his own at the Complutense in Madrid, he spent “three frustrated courses” approaching the physical sciences, until in the end he opted for a well-founded social science, and graduated in Economics. In 1998, after working for a few years in companies “related to numbers”, he founded the publishing house, and in 1999 he published his first book, the essay ‘Transeúntes (de América Latina)’, which was followed by stories (‘The other deaths ‘, 2018) and, above all, books and travel guides, more than a dozen, including some, such as his ‘101 surprising destinations in Spain’, which is now in its eighth edition. Not to mention an unpublished novel, who knows… He was driven to want to be a writer by winning, at the age of ten, a writing contest at school. Then, some readings that, from the hand of Carlos, a schoolmate, left a deep mark on him, such as ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, by Hemingway; ‘The city and the dogs’, by Vargas Llosa, or ‘Siddharta’ and ‘Steppenwolf’, by Hermann Hesse. All of them volumes that he still keeps in his library, after the last move, like small treasures. “Chaotic” reader, especially of narrative, and yet editor of poetry. Because although Bartleby Editores was born with a triple dedication to narrative, essay and poetry, over time the latter has been firmly imposed in the catalogue. He learned to be an editor, as he says, with “a half-hour editing master’s degree in Pío Serrano’s office at Verbum.” He knew something about writing and writers, even about economics, but about design, production, distribution, marketing… Regarding the first idea of the three partners, in all this time he has greatly valued the advice that Sergio Gaspar gave him when he closed the DVD label : not to edit for philologists, but for poetry readers, of which there are and are not few. The pandemic served to ratify the commitment to readers of paper books, above all technological compromise. This is what the motto that appears on the back cover of all Bartleby books obeys: “Twenty-six years creating readers.” Soon there will be twenty-seven. There are readers, and small publishers too, although many of them, says Pepo Paz, remain precarious, like a patient who reduces his breathing in order to continue living. There has always been and always will be a handful of loyal readers, he also says, no matter how much the market tries to induce a process of “expulsion of the genre from commercial circuits.” What has been the editorial paradigm shift? Among others, until recently poetry books relied on bookstores and the criteria of booksellers, while today it is difficult to find them on the shelves, and they depend more on digital platforms, which deliver them to you in one day. . Finding the poetry section in a bookstore has become a real adventure… and despite everything the books sell. Among the hallmarks of the label, betting as pioneers on bilingual translations of American writers or also seeking out the poetry of authors who stood out in other genres, from Faulkner to Carver to Kapuscinski: “A vein of joys,” he says. From obstacle to obstacle in these almost thirty years of publishing experience, it was the crisis of 2008 that prompted the label to focus its efforts on poetry over narrative and essays. And the pandemic served to ratify the commitment to paper book readers, above all technological compromises. The future? As the aforementioned Sergio Gaspar described it: step by step and thinking that the one who is capable of having a distinction over the others is the one who will stay. Better to publish ten good books a year, “without overwhelming bookstores or critics,” than a hundred of those that do not sell a hundred copies. Quality and difference, which seem to be the only possible paths for independent publishers.
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