He says he likes writing almost as much as the octopus. Or like traveling to Italy in the summer. But he barely has time to do it. He is the author of a handful of books on education and youth (‘I’m left with Madrid’, ‘Gagged’, ‘Check in the net’, ‘Nocturno’, ‘Andanzas en Calcutta’, ‘Cry Jerusalem’), although currently His job as CEO of Ediciones Rialp absorbs all his time… and a little more. Eighty titles a year are a few titles. That, and the heritage of a long-established publishing house that traces its origins to 1947, when it was founded by a group of university professors with the purpose of disseminating “a Christian vision of the human being.” Before joining Rialp, where he has been an editor for four decades, Santiago Herraiz (Vigo, 1963) was dedicated to the world of teaching. For more than a decade he directed a university college in Madrid, and for 25 years he has been on the board of directors of Fomento de Centros de Enseñanza. However, he says, the universe of education has changed substantially: today a thirty-year-old is completely alien to what a fourteen-year-old thinks. And in the end, you pay for the mistakes made in recent years in this territory in a society with notable cancers. From the world of teaching he was kidnapped by the publishing world. His biological father had been president of Ediciones Rialp and his professional father, Miguel Arango, prepared him for a long time, before retiring, to take charge of the house. Until today, Herraiz admires how the publishing house has managed to maintain its independence over time. Before all that, Santiago Herraiz was a child who woke up to reading with ‘The Book of Virgin Lands’, by Rudyard Kipling, which Later, the Disney film became established in the collective imagination as ‘The Jungle Book’. And Jules Verne was read from cover to cover. And one day he truly felt how far a book could take him when reading ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘Nine Tales’ by JD Salinger hit him hard. A composer of songs at 17, and a Law graduate from the Complutense of Madrid who enjoyed studying the degree more than practicing it. Looking back on his own experience at Rialp, Santiago Herraiz admires how the publishing house has managed to maintain its independence over time. And overcome the strengths and borders that the world of publishing has had to go through in recent years. Including some crises that came to seem insurmountable. But not. The seal continues there, for example with another true classic such as the collection of the Adonáis Prize for young poets, which Vicente Aleixandre founded at the time. That he joined the publishing house at the very moment of its birth, when Florentino Pérez-Embid bought it from Hispánica. Which premiered in Rialp with ‘Alegría’, by José Hierro. Which has been led throughout its history by José Luis Cano and Luis Jiménez Martos. And which is currently directed by the Sevillian poet Carmelo Guillén Acosta. In addition to all his collections of history, thought, family, poetry, education, novels, Christian authors…GrowthUnder his direction, the collection that was Rialp’s flagship for many years, its Library of Current Thought, was rescued (2016), which now has more of seventy titles in its new stage. Its splendid History series was promoted, which has incorporated extraordinary editions, such as the five-volume biography of Dostoevsky, by Joseph Frank, and whose latest title is ‘Salieri, the man who did not kill Mozart’, by Ernesto Monsalve. And some ‘delicatessen’ were opened, such as the Twelve Grapes collection, with titles such as ‘The Dream of Scipio’, by Cicero, ‘Democracy in America’, by Tocqueville, or ‘The Cherry Tree and the Palm Tree’, by Gerardo Diego. Each book, like the grape, says the editor, “sweet, cheap, eaten quickly and leaves a good taste in our mouths.” It may seem like a miracle, yes, but the truth is that Rialp, like most Spanish publishers, has also enjoyed a considerable increase in the sale of its paper books since the pandemic. A growth that is not explosive today, but is maintained. How the publisher’s digital books remain at just ten percent (somewhat above the national average). The advantages of reading on paper or, perhaps, the fatigue of screens… In any case, says Herraiz, the question that is repeated every year in the halls of the Frankfurt Fair: Until when? At the moment, the disappearance of the paper book that Bill Gates predicted for the year 2000 is not going to happen in 2024. Nor does it seem that it will happen in 2025 or 2026… quite the opposite. Editors think. The readers decide.
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