“We have seen with amazement how something so unexpected, such as the pandemic, hit the publishing industry in very different ways, but it struck Mexican publishers in a very particular way, a low blow from which the exit is beginning to be seen. My solidarity and affection with my colleagues. To them a message of encouragement and hope ”.
This was part of the speech with which Marisol Schulz Manaut (Mexico City, 1957), general director of the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL Guadalajara), accepted the Juan Pablos Award for Editorial Merit, the highest award for the editorial work that delivered by the National Chamber of the Mexican Editorial Industry (Caniem), which it received this Thursday night as part of the 2021 edition of the Caniem 2021 Awards.
“Despite our being an industry made up of thousands of women who are working in the different areas of the so-called book chain, I am the fifth woman who is honored to receive this immense recognition. It is worth this to also recognize the women who preceded me ”, declared who became the forty-fourth personality and the fifth woman to receive the distinction.
“I know because I have lived it, and from my own experience I have continued to observe it with the readings of my daughter and my young grandchildren, that the way a child reads differs completely from the way we approach reading as adults. A child lives in the world of his characters, invites them to the house, dialogues with them, they sit at the table to eat, they are part of their daily life ”, he extended remotely in this ceremony that, for the second consecutive year, took carried out virtually, as is a tradition, on the eve of the birth of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, this November 12, National Book Day.
“Impossible to read my life as a reader in a few lines. These are just a few strokes, an outline that what it intends to point out is that this accumulation of letters, words and ideas were forging what would ultimately be my profession, that of editor (…) I am convinced that my editorial work was a A direct consequence of my love of reading and my thirst to learn about the most diverse subjects, ”he said.
She also remembered the book with which she had to start her work as an editor. Nothing more and nothing less than “El naranjo”, by Carlos Fuentes. “All the books I have edited instill the same respect and I have devoted the same affection to them, but I must admit that with ‘El naranjo’ he began a path that in a certain sense forged my destiny (…) I read that book at least five times , always with a pencil in hand, and I had the privilege of writing the fourth of covers ”.
Finally, she acknowledged that although she is not formally editing, when asked her profession, she always responds with conviction: “editor”.
Piracy, library instability and metadata
For his part, Roberto Bachik Rothschild, general director of Penguin Random House for Mexico, Central America and the Hispanic market in the United States, winner of the Editorial Merit recognition, mentioned that two great challenges of the industry in our times are piracy and impunity in the illegal reproduction of protected editorial content.
“There is little that we have actually been able to do. During the long months of the pandemic, piracy has spread and strengthened like weeds. And now, in addition, physical piracy coexists with digital piracy, and worse still, from the authorities we receive not only zero help to face it, but it is the government itself that intends to appropriate content protected by contracts and copyright. , bypassing the rule of law, ”he declared.
Second, he mentioned, there is the “weakness and instability” of the bookstore network in our country. “We are facing a paradigm shift in the way of promoting, distributing and selling books, which is not new, but which was accentuated during the pandemic. At the same time that electronic commerce grows at dizzying rates, and nothing is wrong with this, we see that the country’s bookstore network cannot fully raise its head. Large, medium and small publishers have a gigantic responsibility to help strengthen both the bookstore chains and the independent ones and the neighborhood ones ”.
He proposed that as an industry it is urgent to generate a strategic plan to support the legal, commercial, technological and supply chain for the bookstores that, he said, are the main partners and commercial accomplices. “Without booksellers we will hardly be able to survive all or many.”
He also urged the industry to put emphasis on metadata, since, he explained, “we have very little information and we know almost nothing about the market in which we operate. The new times force us to share information, to generate analyzes that benefit everyone for making individual and union decisions that allow us to go to the authorities with data and evidence that deny or strengthen different positions (…) as an industry we must take sides in defending our freedoms and not keeping silent in the face of the advance of lies, intolerance, defamation and censorship. We will not survive if we remain silent and with our silence we allow it ”.
Other details of the ceremony
In this framework, as is a tradition, the National Book Association presented the 42nd edition of the commemorative book that will be given to anyone who purchases another book in any of the bookstores that join this initiative in this and subsequent days. The book chosen this year was the poetic anthology “La grulla del refrán”, by Ramón López Velarde, whose centenary of death is commemorated this year.
“The publishing industry does not think or act selfishly. We are a production chain. Each one of us is indispensable in the production of books and magazines, each one contributes an essential part in the transmission of knowledge, different visions of a world that contains us and still gives us a place to exist, a world that we continue to change from our point of view. own trench ”, declared Juan Luis Arzoz Arbide, president of the Chamber.
THE AWARDS
- Juan Pablos National Award for Editorial Merit
- Marisol Schulz Manaut, general director of the Guadalajara International Book Fair
Caniem Award for Guild Merit
- Roberto Bachik Rothschild, CEO of Penguin Random House for Mexico, Central America and the Hispanic market in the United States
Editorial Art Awards
* Category: Children’s Books
Rustic:
- “Tale of the forgetful mockingbird”, Ediciones El Naranjo
Illustrated albums:
- “Houses”, Alboroto Editions
* Category: Youth Books
Hard cover:
- “José Mariano Mociño: a great unknown Mexican scientist”, Cidcli
Rustic:
- “Talismans for the road”, Ediciones Castillo
* Category: Graphic narrative
Adults:
- “Nothing to see”, Editorial Océano de México
* Category: Poetry
Poemaries:
- “Window closed”, Directorate General of Publications and Editorial Development UNAM
* Category: Narrative and adult essay
Hard cover:
- “Camino a Macondo”, Editorial Planeta Mexicana
Rustic:
- Mexico 500 Collection, Institute of Historical Research and General Directorate of Publications and Editorial Development UNAM
* Category: Text
Primary
- Seria Integración, Editorial Progreso / Edelvives
Higher and Higher Average
- “The methodological imagination”, Tintable
* Category: Scientists and technicians
Illustrated
- “The Forest of Chapultepec, sacred and natural site of Mexico”, Arts of Mexico
* Category: Art
Essays and Studies
- “Codices of Mexico”, National Institute of Anthropology and History and Secretary of Culture and Tourism of the Government of the State of Mexico
Deluxe Illustrated Editions
- “I was in Avándaro. 50 years ”, Trilce Ediciones
* Category: Electronic books
Children
- “Cloud bread”, Books to imagine
Caniem Awards
Business Initiative of the Year
- “The Rivas Mercado house. A story behind the story “, Editorial Ink
Editorial Initiative of the Year
- Mexico 500 Collection, General Directorate of Publications and Editorial Development UNAM
Category: Book of the Year
- “Mexican. Thirteen contemporary narratives ”, Editorial Fondo Blanco
Category: Non-Fiction
- “Murals, mirror of identity: Heritage of the Universidad Veracruzana”, Universidad Veracruzana
Category: Children and Youth
- “Of nests, stars and sunflowers. The child Vincent van Gogh ”, by Mario Iván Martínez and Juan Gedovius, Alfaguara Infantil y Juvenil
ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx