Cover image of Librotea.
For small or medium-sized bookstores there are two factors that shake their sustainability and their existence. On the one hand, logically, a country that does not read is a country that does not consume books and therefore the shopkeepers selling this "strange" object make no profit.
If to all this we add the impossibility on the part of the few readers to disburse according to what economic amounts in these books, we can explain that, logically, many bookstores have been forced to close its doors in recent years.
This reality has been increased or accelerated with the emergence of a new competitor for the neighborhood bookseller. A competitor much more adapted to the new reality based on the network as a large area to buy and find everything you want.
I'm talking, of course, about virtual platforms. These spaces not only allow you to find all the references in one click that one wants but, on many occasions, the books are at much more economically affordable prices, something that ends up favoring the buyer.
A competition that many bookstores cannot take on and that has led, as we have already mentioned, to the disappearance of many of them since more and more are those who, before searching and rummaging through them, they prefer to access large virtual stores to buy the books they want.
Anyway, El Pais has reached a collaboration agreement with the Guild of booksellers of Spain (Cegal) , thus incorporating to the Librotea application (created by the Country) all the libraries registered in this union.
Librotea, for those who do not know it, is a literary search and recommendation application And, as a result of this collaboration, from now on, it will allow its users to search for books in a search engine that brings together all the small and medium-sized bookstores throughout Spain.
With this, the book recommender Online it stands out from other spaces by betting on neighborhood and neighborhood bookstores apart from the existing large virtual surfaces.
In this way, through the geocolocation of these stores, you can know the closest places where you can buy one or another book. A phenomenal tool that brings us closer to the bookstores of our cities or towns and allows these to make themselves known to customers.
In any case, the tool not only focuses on finding and buying books but also on creating a community of people who are passionate about reading. In this space, therefore, from now on The booksellers themselves are the ones who will create the descriptive sheets for each book and, together with other personalities from the world of literature or culture, they can also create their own recommendations.
In the short time it has been in operation, 30.000 people have already registered in Librotea, a figure that will surely grow as we readers get to know this great space.
The new literary offer of the application will be accessible through the Cegal search engine www.allyourbooks.com, which will appear in Free. I invite all readers of Actualidad literatura to try and get to know this new tool. Not only to enter a virtual literary community but to give neighborhood bookstores a chance.
Stores that, despite the inclement weather they are forced to face, are reluctant to disappear in a world that does not read and does not consume literature. In a country where, According to the latest data, 35% of its inhabitants admit that they never or almost never read.
It is in our hands, therefore, to continue guaranteeing its existence since, in short, the bookstores have been and are the redoubt and the cave where all those who just live with a paper book in our hands, we get our dose of harmony and happiness.
I write from the city of Veracruz, Ver., Mexico.
In the SECTIONS column there are two headings Genres and Literature; In none of them can I find a directory with the names, telephones, emails, hours, mediator, places or addresses in which the Rooms, circles or Reading groups of a specific city meet, in the case of your visit either by work, business or tourism, let us know where to attend and predestine my time in promoting and promoting reading.
In the case of its non-existence, I suggest and propose the initiative of including and instituting a public registry to constitute a directory with the names, telephone numbers, emails, hours, mediator, places or addresses of the Reading Rooms by cities, countries and public institutions. or private.
If the initiative is approved, add a line such as Reading Rooms to access and that the mediators enter the proposed data or those that they can add in improvement.
I reiterate to the correspondence of your fine attentions.
As is vulgarly said, to writers that we are not sponsored by a major publisher or water. However, my last published book (the tenth), was edited by Nobel Ediciones. It is entitled: "In privacy." 96 minimal stories, 2018. ISBN: 978-84-8459-732-2. Illustrated with photographs of bare trees taken by the author himself: Alberto Carlos Polledo Arias. Price, 15 euros. You will love it!
In each of its pages a story germinated in which the emotion of the script and the flutter of the language will be embedded in your mind through the cracks hidden behind the curtains of wandering clouds.