The Colombian Publishing Industry

Logos, Journal of the World publishing Community, Vol.20 Issue 1-4 2009

INSIGHTS INTO THE COLOMBIAN PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

Or how to publish books in a country where no one reads

Not even an inmate in the loo

Around 2002, the Colombian National Statistics Department (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica, DANE) undertook a household survey to determine general consumption patterns of Colombians. Leaving strong public criticism of its methodology aside, part of the outcome was rather disconcerting, in particular the figures related to cultural consumption. The most eloquent figure had to do with books: on average, a Colombian purchases 1.1 books a year, including text books.

In the second half of 2008, DANE did another household survey. The indicator had changed, but the results were still bleak: Colombians went from reading 1.82 books per year, per person, to 1.93 in 2008. Jesús Martín Barbero, a specialist in cultural industries, dared look deeper into the numbers and reached terrifying conclusions: “Only 52.4% of Colombians say they have read a book (47.6% do not read books). Forty-seven percent have read at least a magazine, and 57% have read a newspaper. In conclusion, one half of the country does not read at all.”

In 2007, 12,127 books were published, and one year later 12,587 new works found their way into the market. To place the size of the Colombian publishing industry into perspective, one only need to compare it to the market in the United Kingdom (around 120,000 in 2004) and the United States (approximately 170,000). In Latin America and Spain, the numbers for 2006 are:

Despite the fact that Enrique Peñalosa in Bogotá and Sergio Fajardo in Medellin, during their terms as mayors of their respective cities, have implemented social inclusion strategies such as the construction of libraries, and that Bogotá was chosen as the World Capital of Books in 2007, the impact in terms of reading levels and book purchases has been of little significance. This responds without a doubt to a complex equation that combines the slow but steady penetration of the Internet (around 35% of the population by 2008) with the massive book piracy industry, which takes from legitimate sectors the equivalent of USD 10 million each year.

But above all, I believe that this phenomenon is caused, much to my regret, by the fact that Colombia is a country where culture has a very low priority in the concerns of the state and its leaders. This is surely due to the political conflict that has afflicted the country for over fifty years and that has recently gained in intensity because of the rise of drug trafficking. Despite all military efforts and government achievements, half of the country’s inhabitants live below the poverty line. Issues such as culture, art, and above all, books, can only be the concern of just a few people.

It was in such a daunting context that I had the idea to set up a publishing house in Colombia. After completing my undergraduate studies in industrial engineering and literature, I was determined to create a company in an area that really excited me. I had no plans to become an academic, which is the only path set for literature graduates in Colombia, but I also did not want to become an employee of a multinational, which is the most common dream of local engineers. During my college years I had led a rock band named Ultrageno. This band, which promoted a political message of non-violence, captured the imagination of many young men and women and performed for audiences of over 100,000 people at rock music festivals promoted by the city of Bogotá. But if the book industry is in bad shape, the rock music industry is downright dying. Piracy levels are so high that a band such as ours managed to sell only 5,000 records. In Colombia, a band that manages to sell 10,000 records earns a platinum record, while in the United States they must sell 1,000,000 copies.

It was this experience of leading a rock band which was a public success but unable to generate profits that led to my starting my own company when I finished college. It was time to channel my passion into a viable and sustainable project, combining the two disciplines I had studied: literature and management. There were only a few simple questions I had to answer. How do you sell books in a country that does not read? How to sell books in a country where not even an inmate in the loo reads? My story should show how creative industries work in a country such as Colombia, where state investment in weapons is nineteen times greater than the budget assigned to research (3.8% and 0.2% of GDP, respectively).

How do you sell books in a country that does not read? How to sell books in a country where not even an inmate in the loo reads?

Standing apart from the industry

My final university thesis was entitled “Abulafia Editorial, a Business Plan.” It described a company that offered editorial services (layout, design, editing, packaging, etc.) to other Colombian publishing companies. It received outstanding marks at the Universidad de los Andes, and I proceeded to implement the project. But two days after I had made the decision and scheduled my first sales appointment, I understood why publishing companies were not willing to pay what I was charging for my services. One of the biggest factors was that in the Colombian creative industries there is a high level of informality, which allows any graphic professional to produce layouts, any humanist to write, and anyone who’s graduated from high school to edit. The result was that my whole business plan fell to pieces (even the company name, which was a tribute to the computer in Foucault’s Pendulum, failed because nobody understood me when I said it). Again, academia had proven to be far removed from reality. In truth, they were worlds apart.

It was then that I began working with Jorge Molina, an expert in marketing, to design a new plan. We carefully went over the figures produced by the industry and discovered that there was an important percentage of companies that, because of the informality of the creative sector, published books themselves, without going to specialised companies. Approximately one tenth of the books published in the country had been registered by non-publishing and non-academic organisations. We also confirmed that the B2C (business-to-consumer) market was a dead end. In Bogotá, the capital city, there were only 80 bookstores for more than 7 million inhabitants. Finally, detailed research demonstrated that books were held in low esteem, particularly with regard to their potential. For many, the publishing market was made up of self-help books, coffee-table books, college textbooks, and literary works, but nothing more.

It was through these three insights that we developed a concept which would determine our company’s position in the market: editorial branding, books made to strengthen brands. Our products would allow other companies to create some stir in the media, develop marketing strategies, position themselves as authorities in a business area, promote events such as launches, conferences, parties, etc.; in short, books that would create new communication channels to reach their elusive audiences. The concept entailed a double challenge, since aside from promoting the use of books it required educating the public on branding. However, it seemed promising since it allowed us to fulfill one of the basic laws of the world of brands: generate a new business category. With the new strategy we also arrived at a new name: .Puntoaparte. Our books would stand a world apart from the Colombian publishing industry.

The first pages of the story

The company was officially born in 2005. I convinced my father and a designer friend to go into business with me. The initial investment was 5,000,000 Colombian pesos (something close to USD 2,500). It may not sound like much, but I did not have that amount available. To get it I entered two competitions: one in poetry and one in history, in my university. It was time to put my Literature degree to work for my dreams. Fortunately, in the first competition I won first place and in the second, third place. These prizes provided me with a small amount of money which I then invested in a rock concert with BajoFondo Tango Club, the band of Gustavo Santaolalla, a widely recognised producer in Latin America. Luckily, the attendance was higher than expected and I doubled my investment. I finally had the money needed to start .Puntoaparte.

The first years were, as expected, very difficult as very few people were willing to take on the challenge of publishing books. Fortunately, my high-school, the Anglo Colombian School, was nearing its 50th anniversary. Thanks to this chance, my first publishing project was not traumatic and it allowed me to make many contacts. Afterwards, books for local companies began to appear, and little by little we started to generate an interesting corpus of publications, although nothing extraordinary.

Actually, the outlook was not very encouraging. Companies were beginning to become more sensitive to branding issues, but .Puntoaparte still needed more sales. Although we had gone from zero employees to three in 2007, we were slightly frustrated because the effort was overwhelming and the results anything but. The context was so discouraging that I decided to enroll in a part-time MBA programme at Los Andes as a “Plan B,” in case the company failed. From those unpromising days it is worth mentioning some deals which we were able to close, and which illustrate, on the one hand, how our business works, and on the other, the kind of market we are building in our country.

If making books or rock music in Colombia was difficult, one can imagine the challenge that opera was facing in the country. Camarin del Carmen, a not-for-profit Colombian organisation for the promotion of theater and opera, has been in this fight for over thirty years. Their project has been epic, if not utopian, but they have allowed Colombians to gain access to exquisite lyrical poetry and, in some cases, to world renowned artists. This organisation wanted to publish a book, but had no money to do so. That was when we suggested that they publish a coffee-table book telling their story, where they could also sell ad space to their previous sponsors. Intrigued by this new proposal, they agreed to do this, whereby the Camarin managed to beat their historical sales records, one ad at a time. The book not only delighted their fans, but also allowed the Camarin to organise launch events and to obtain much-needed publicity in the media.

Kassani, by contrast, is a company specialising in selling seating for large venues. The company’s directors knew they had to position themselves as authorities in the field of ergonomics, particularly to designers, but they did not know how to do it. The .Puntoaparte team suggested publishing a book on local designers who approach ergonomics in innovative ways. Juan Pablo Umaña (designer for Honda motorcycles), Santiago Barriga (expert in the ergonomics of videogame players), and Mario Pinilla (expert in prosthetics), among others were included in the book to complete a set of nine cases. 9 Posturas (9 Postures) was the title of the book. It should be noted that there are not many publications on local design, so everyone in the design trade turned their attention to the publication. The effect was so immense that Kassani was able to organise nine different launch events, one for each designer.

Finally, another noteworthy deal was with Manantial, a brand of mineral water. This company wanted to strengthen their advertising and highlight the fact that, in contrast with other brands, theirs was literally spring water. To this end we published a large-format book with pictures of the high mountains where the water came from, and it was launched before groups of journalists at vegetarian lunch events. The journalists were also taken to the spring and the book was given to them as a gift. The result was a powerful impact in the media, which allowed the brand to position itself almost at the level of gourmet water.

The British Connection

After the start of my postgraduate studies and the departure of one of my business partners in 2008, 2009 brought an amazing surprise. The year began with an invitation from the Ministry of Culture to participate in an event organised to select young publishing entrepreneurs who would represent Colombia in an international competition. Thinking that this opportunity had my name written all over it, I presented my project. There are so few publishers in Colombia that a large number of competitors were actually friends. After competing with two other finalists, one of whom was a childhood buddy who had developed a business model for children’s books to be sold at theatre plays, my project was selected.

This was how, in April of 2009, I arrived in London where I was received by the British Council. There I met with publishers/entrepreneurs from the Arab Emirates, Russia, India, Argentina, Turkey, Slovenia, Lebanon, and South Africa. We went on to visit the London Book Fair where I learned more about companies such as Penguin, Pearson, Bloomsbury, and Lighthouse. The Council had brought us together to establish contacts and to have a closer look at the publishing sector in the United Kingdom, as part of the International Young Publishing Entrepreneur (IYPE) competition. Luck was on my side again as .Puntoaparte reached the first place and received the grand prize of £5,000 plus a stand at the 2010 London Book Fair.

This was the turning point for the company. As soon as I returned to Colombia, I received news that the AMBA (Association of MBAs) had chosen me as one of four finalists for The Independent International Student of the Year Award. (In the end the award was given to the French competitor, Lindsey Nefesh-Clarke, who is sure to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in a couple of decades for her work with women and poverty).

I am a huge fan of my country, so much so that I created a publishing brand that revolves around it. However, every day I collide with a reality that poses constant challenges, many of them overwhelming.

A week later we were nominated for the Lapiz de Acero (Iron Pencil) design award for 9 Posturas, at the same time that news of my IYPE award appeared in the London Times. In Colombia the effect was unbelievable, not least because the El Tiempo newspaper chose me as their Personality of the Day and because the media opened up to the company due to the international recognition we had received.

It was then that new clients started to appear, including many multinational companies. Brand names such as Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, Hunter Douglas, Leo Burnett, Sika, Merck, and organisations such as the World Bank and the OIM (Organización Internacional para las Migraciones) started to hire us. I also began to organise entrepreneurship conferences for my MBA programme and for other institutes, as well as deliver talks on branding for entrepreneurs in the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce. By the end of 2009, .Puntoaparte had 16 employees and had hired over one hundred people from the creative sector as freelance workers or part-time employees over its four and a half years of operation.

New rules, new setbacks

In 2010 the high publicity continued and we received invitations to participate as guests at the Dubai Book Fair. I was also selected among 35 young Latin-American business leaders to give a talk at a conference in New York. Also, the London Book Fair meant I had to find a new approach to the book business, as our branding strategy required deep knowledge of local markets. Evidently, I did not know much about British business, so I had to come up with something.

But then the problems began. Although the event in New York, where Americas Quarterly Magazine was being launched, was a marvelous experience, my participation in the Dubai Fair got canceled due to the country’s dramatic economic downturn. But something worse happened in connection to London: an Icelandic volcano erupted spewing forth vowels, consonants, and ashes, blocking my path to London. This meant a great financial loss for .Puntoaparte, but more than that, it was a hard psychological blow to the people involved as we had spent many months preparing the new strategy.

What we had been working on was this. Since we could not offer brand books to British companies, we had to figure out a way to offer European publishers content without moving away from our editorial branding business (another law of brands). Towards the end of 2009 we decided to explore another concept: publishing brands. I reminded my team that during my visits to Penguin and Bloomsbury I had realised that in the publishing industry there are many brand ideas, but that they are diffuse and applied more through intuition than through a deliberate marketing plan.

We began to investigate and found that branding also works in the publishing world, but with some variations. For example, there are four areas that one can focus on when branding in this sector: a character (Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond), an author (Stephen King, John Grisham, William Shakespeare), a collection (for Dummies) or an imprint (Taschen, DK, Vertigo). With this insight we began to develop several brands, but there was one that stole the spotlight. A brand specialised in content about Latin America.

The logic behind our imprint is simple: in the United Kingdom they know how to make better graphic novels than Colombians, better Italian recipes than Argentineans, and, as a matter of fact, do not read anything that is not in English (as confirmed by several people from the publishing industry there). But no one there knows more about Latin America than we do, since we had published books that companies distributed all over the continent, researched many of their subjects, and worked with HarperCollins on the development of materials under their Rayo imprint, specializing in Latin celebrities. If we add to this that Shakira has been chosen as one of the sexiest women in the world by FHM Scotland, and that there is an increasing passion for salsa music in Europe, we had to take advantage of the opportunity.

To this end we generated a full communication strategy and many proposals. Everything – the appointments, the samples, the dummies, etc. – was ready. But the Eyjafjallajokull got in the way. The strategy was delayed for a year, and all of our plans were seriously hampered. However, my first contacts in the European publishing sector have been very positive and we currently have two deals well underway. The publishing brand is Latinlover: Latin Books for Latin Lovers.

Epilogue

In this article I wanted to recreate part of what it means to be an entrepreneur of the cultural industries in Colombia. I am a huge fan of my country, so much so that I created a publishing brand that revolves around it. However, every day I collide with a reality that poses constant challenges, many of them overwhelming. These are some of them:

The powerlessness of culture

As already mentioned, culture is pushed way into the background in Colombia. Maybe this is justified. In contrast with European countries, where issues of basic need have been resolved, in Latin America we must still fight extreme inequality and the intrinsic problems of poverty. In this context, culture remains marginal. This is understandable, but unfortunate. My experience with dance groups, theatre troupes, film producers, rock bands, and publishers has shown me astonishing local talent that stagnates in an environment too sterile for initiatives of this nature.

It is difficult to imagine a book for people who have rarely held one in their hands, let alone a book that promotes a brand and articulates marketing strategies.

Total lack of reading

I know that this phenomenon is not exclusive to Colombia. It is an issue of global proportions and is related to mass media as well as to some direct and indirect effects of the rise of the Internet. But it’s still surprising that in Colombia, a country of more than 45 million, a novel that sells 2,000 copies is considered a best-seller, and that there is still such a deep ignorance of books and the role they play in an ostensibly Eurocentric society such as ours. This is illustrated by the fact that whenever we are trying to sell a project we must first build a dummy not only for others to see how we plan to make the book, but to allow them to visualise the concept. It is difficult to imagine a book for people who have rarely held one in their hands, let alone a book that promotes a brand and articulates marketing strategies.

The precariousness of the Colombian publishing environment

If we examine this industry in detail we will see two serious problems that directly influence low reading levels. First, because we are part of Spanish speaking America, a large portion of the books sold locally come from Spain. Since they are imported, they are very expensive, making the book a relatively inaccessible good for most. This is shown by the enormous sales of some pirate companies. Second, the distribution system is broken: in contrast with Europe and the United States, the concept of a distributor, whose sole task is to take the books from the warehouse of the publisher to the bookstores, does not exist. This is caused by publishers taking care of distribution themselves in order to retain what little profit they generate, and by the fact that the few bookstores in existence make the job relatively easy. However, this makes the entry of new, small publishers laborious and reduces the dynamism of the business in general.

As is usual in these cases, the lack of readers reduces the number of bookstores, raising the prices of books, which were expensive to begin with, which in turn leads to fewer readers, etc. Ad infinitum.

Finally, it is important to mention another key element. The publishing sector is very poorly documented. Although it has the support of the CERLALC (Regional Center for the Encouragement of Reading in Latin America) and the Cámara del Libro (Chamber of Books), it is not easy to find recent and complete statistics on the sector in general. In fact, for my marketing plan and for this article I investigated numerous archives and spoke to many people in the trade. They acknowledged that the informality of the sector is also seen in the lack of rigour, quality, and quantity of the available information. Some indicators are changed along the way and there is a lack of rigour in measuring them, let alone sharing them with the public. Case in point: In 2006, the Cámara del Libro stopped publishing their book Estadísticas del Libro en Colombia (Book Statistics in Colombia), which it published every year. The reason? It began to publish it on the Internet… until 2007, when it stopped publishing the document altogether. So, we have a Chamber of Books which does not publish any.

The informality of the creative industries

In Colombia there is plenty of talent. As good Latin-Americans, we have blended the intuition and talent inherent in our races and cultures with a Eurocentric and academic legacy that in many cases is alienating, but more often is inspiring and enriching.

However, there is such an absence of formalisms here that a fashion designer, for instance, can decorate interiors, make logos, develop packaging or even design an architectural endeavour. Something similar happens with journalists, writers, bloggers, translators, essayists, poets, and other humanists that dabble a bit in everything, and therefore excel at nothing. This total lack of specialisation causes the disciplines to lose their quality, and above all, their self-respect, making it hard to assign them their true value. There are also no organisations or official unions to guide pricing and other practices, creating another vicious cycle of informality and relativity.

The difficulties of being an entrepreneur

In the United States one can find the concept of the serial entrepreneur. An entrepreneur who fails repeatedly in his or her start-up projects but perseveres nonetheless is regarded with respect and even admiration. This is not the case in Colombia, and I’ll even say, Latin America. Of course, there is a deep respect for the successful and philanthropic entrepreneur, but not for the small start-up. I see proof of this every day in my part-time MBA programme: among the close to 50 people in the programme, only four or five have our own company.

The situation is even more acute within the creative industries, where everything has to do with originality and, particularly, intellectual property. If you believe that the book sector has a precarious structure, don’t even get me started. I can say that there is no knowledge of the subject of copyright, and only now are law firms specialising in intellectual property popping up. Beyond the rampant piracy there is a very high degree of disinformation or simple ignorance regarding copyright. In an environment with such a degree of negligence, it is very difficult for companies or self-employed artists to make a decent living.

Having said all this, knowing that .Puntoaparte is heading for a difficult year, and knowing that the challenges of the business will continue until the day that I or the company dies, I believe that the learning process has been of infinite value, and the experiences incredibly gratifying. I feel that the door to the international world which has opened thanks to the IYPE award is the key to the puzzle: it is something I had only thought possible after, maybe, fifteen more years.

A return to London in 2011 will be not only an achievement for me or for the company. It is an opportunity to promote the talent of my country, which is only now beginning to understand that artists, humanists, and other creative people are not only exotic individuals, but that they can become key assets of Colombia, a country that is searching for itself between obsolete left- and right-wing political systems, and that wants to be more like Europe without losing its roots.

Maybe we, the creative entrepreneurs, can shed light on the way to do it. I hope that in the future .Puntoaparte and I will be there to tell the story.

—

Andrés Barragán

After obtaining a degree in Literature (magna cum laude) and Industrial Engineering from Universidad de los Andes in 2002, and a successful stint as guitarist of Colombian rock band Ultrágeno, Andrés Barragán founded his own publishing company .Puntoaparte, specialising in editorial branding.

For his work with .Puntoaparte in 2009 Mr Barragán has been nominated for the Lápiz de Acero design award, and for The Independent’s International MBA Student of the Year award. That same year, he won the prestigious International Young Publishing Entrepreneur Award in London.

Since 2008 Mr Barragán has also served on the Board of Directors of the Soydoy foundation, a nonprofit organisation developing projects to improve the welfare of children in Colombia.

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