Well, to the surprise of many, among whom I find myself, The Comic Catalog: ECC as it is known, it announced yesterday through an extensive press release that it is going to launch a narrative line. The truth is that they have to be very sure that the material they are going to publish is good, because the one that is falling with (a report on the decline in book publishing in Spain has recently been published) is risky to say the least. I certainly applaud the initiative. The full statement below:
That the Spanish-language publishing scene is not going through its best moment is no secret. In that context, launching new editorial lines would seem like a project destined for failure. The general perception is that in our country people read less and less. But is that true?
If we were to judge demand by supply, it could be that way. The bookstore tables accumulate (many times attempts at) best sellers, more and more "genre" literature and the somewhat disorderly recovery of editorial funds. Although there are great proposals (usually from small publishers), the truth is that it is increasingly difficult for the reader to swim between the different releases that fill the bookstore tables month after month.
The competition for this space, added to the decrease in sales, has reduced the average life of the book in the bookstore, so that hardly anyone edits and / or exhibits to generate a long-term catalog.
Putting things this way, author representation is, therefore, scarce, and organization in the ideal library, impossible: there are a lack of books, there are a lack of authors, there are many countries with little and poor representation and it is difficult to find outdated books.
In addition, in the section on translations, it is not uncommon to find books translated from a bridge language (Japanese or Chinese are translated from English or French too often, without going any further).
So, is the problem that people don't read or that we don't give people what they want to read and how they want to read it? Is it possible that part of the problem is that we have lost the trust of our readers?
Of course, not all publishers are the same, and there are more and more projects from modest-sized publishers doing an exceptional job of selection and translation, as well as foreword and title design. And that's where ECC and our commitment to narrative come in after years of experience in making comics.
ECC assumes that there are still readers, but they need to be treated differently: they need competent translations, well-selected and well-presented books… but they also need continuity (of the works, of the authors) and coherence.
The Perimeter and Parameter collections by ECC were born in precisely that spirit: we are looking for readers. In return, we will present great books, complete works, and consistent translations throughout our publishing adventure.
ECC's commitment is to offer the market something that we believe is lacking and to offer the public a solid product that can withstand the passage of time on the shelves of bookstores and does justice to some authors who until now have not been given to know enough in our country or they have done it in a disorderly way.
Parameter will collect works by high-caliber literary authors that have not reached the Spanish market, or that have disappeared, or that simply have not been published. The first work, Todo Malgudi, wants to send the message loud and clear. Its author, RK Narayan is one of the best Indian writers in the English language of all history (and in fact, the first successful one) and yet it has only been published sparsely in our country, too many times emphasizing his “ indianidad ”when his work far transcends this characterization.
Perimeter, for its part, will also focus on narrative, but not literary, works: history, reportage, and biographical works. Narratives of writers who do not invent, but see and relate. The first work in the collection, Complete Journalistic Work of Albert Londres, also wants to clearly mark where the shots go. Albert Londres was an essential writer, one of the initiators of investigative journalism and a tireless fighter for lost causes that, for example, and back in the 20's, got his government (the French) to close the Cayenne prison after the reactions that generated their articles among the public in their country. His work, however, is practically unknown in our country.
Finally, at ECC we also like to entertain ourselves, and for that we have created the Álter Ego line. As its name suggests, this editorial line will deal with works of another style: genre literature, but with a special touch. The first trilogy that we will collect on this label is neither more nor less than the fastest and most overwhelming success title from India possibly in the entire history of the 2.000.000th century. It is the Shiva Trilogy, a work that has sold, in India alone and in the English language, more than XNUMX copies in a short time, of which film adaptations are already being made and which does not stop breaking records in his country, in addition to crossing borders with editions all over the world.