Children’s publishers from Chile, Colombia,and Venezuela agreed during a discussion at the Bogotá International Book Fair on the growing importance of the United States’ Spanish-language market, and the need to produce books of quality that will sell in multiple territories.

“Latin American children’s books travel through so many countries [which] adopt them as their own,” said María Osorio, the founding director of the Colombian publisher Babel Libros. “They are books with many passports.”

Osorio moderated a panel on Latin American children’s publishing at the fair earlier this month. And while across the region, children’s publishers are hugely reliant on government purchases for schools in order to survive, the continent’s shared language facilitates distribution, while rights sales into other markets are a major opportunity—although it hasn’t always been that way.

‘Made in Venezuela’

Speakers at the Bogotá International Book Fair on children’s books in Latin America are, from left, María Osorioof the Colombian publisher Babel Libros; María Francisca Mayobre, former director of Venezuela’s Ediciones Ekaré; Larissa Kouzmin-Korovaeff, of Brazil’s Semente Editorial; and Lola Larra, a Chilean author and editor. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Adam Critchley

According to María Francisca Mayobre, director of the Venezuelan publishing house Ediciones Ekare, from 2000 to 2019 and now resident in the United States, her Caracas-based publishing house became a big exporter of books by opening a distribution warehouse in Spain, given the difficulty and cost of distributing from Venezuela to other Latin American countries.

“Ekaré Spain was able to export from there to Colombia, Peru, and Chile,” Mayobre said, “as it was much cheaper to export books to South America that way.”

At the same time, she said, the company’s growth at home answered a demand for books “made in Venezuela.” 

“We had a great awareness of the needs of the population,” she said. “‘For whom are our books?’ They weren’t books produced in response to demand from a library or at the whim of an editor, but because we identified a demand for books ‘made in Venezuela’ and not imported from Spain. The books came first, and then the demand, from libraries, schools, and bookstores, and so a production chain was created in response to that demand. Then came the professionalization of the industry, of illustration, and a local publishing industry was born,” she said.

“It was important to work with readers, the consumers, “Mayobre said, “rather than let the multinational publishers flood the market. Ekaré also sought to make our books local in each market, by using Chilean illustrators and editors in Chile, for example, and discovering local talent. In Chile, there was a boom in children’s books and in the number of illustrators.”

She said that schools were required to buy a minimum quota of Chilean books, which meant that many publishers from outside the country would seek to publish there with Chilean ISBNs, while many Chilean publishers also buy translation rights, in order to enter into that quota. Chile now has more than 70 children’s publishers, she said.

“Many publishers buy translation rights,” she said, “because it’s very cheap to buy rights just for Chile.”

According to Osorio, while Colombian government book purchases give a publishing company a national identity, Colombian publishing is characterized by its catalogues of authors from many parts of the region.

‘Where the Responsibility of the Editor Lies’

At the 2024 edition of the Bogotá International Book Fair. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Adam Critchley

Larissa Kouzmin-Korovaeff is the publisher at Semente Editorial in Brazil and head of Libre, Brazil’s independent publishing association of some 200 companies. She said that the growth of independents in the country means the publishing landscape has changed greatly in 20 years.

“Now it’s very democratic,” Kouzmin-Korovaeff said, “because we can all participate, and that was not possible before, when larger publishers acquired smaller ones and many disappeared, or when publishers simply imported books because it was cheaper than producing their own catalogues.

“But the Brazilian children’s publishing industry,” she said, “remains 100-percent dependent on government purchases, which makes it very different from the industry for adult books.”

The Chilean author and editor Lola Larra said “Readers are not concerned about which country a book comes from, but rather the quality of the book. That’s where the responsibility of the editor lies.”

“If you are a publisher and you’re going to launch a book into another market, you have a moral and ethical duty to make the best book you can, so that when it crosses borders it will be well received.” As an example, Larra referred to her graphic novel Al sur de la Alameda published by Ekaré.

The subject of the book is the 2006 student protests in Chile, and the book has been translated into multiple languages.

Latin American Children’s Books in the United States

At the 2024 edition of the Bogotá International Book Fair. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Adam Critchley

Venezuela’s Mayobre said that outside Latin America, “The American market is very important for Latin American publishers. It’s where there’s a demand for Spanish that’s not from the Iberian peninsula.”

She said that the States as a market for Latin American books has begun to boom in recent years, with an increase in distribution and more bilingual programs in schools. 

“The US market for Spanish-language books has grown as a new generation of Latinos there has emerged, creating a growing demand,” she said. “It’s a huge market and culturally very diverse, with many Latin American authors resident in the United States, receiving fellowships and grants, while bookstores are seen as cultural bastions in that country.”

And yet, “We have to continue to wave the flag for children’s books here” in Latin America, Mayobre said, “because we’re still seeing the need to promote reading among children.

“In the United States, children’s books are sacred. I spent 25 years of my life explaining to people that being a publisher of children’s books is not just a ‘cute’ profession, that it’s much more important than that. In the States, that’s something that doesn’t have to be explained, they know it’s something fundamental. Kids start reading young, and they borrow books from libraries. So why in Latin America do we have to keep explaining the importance of reading to people?”

Asked which are the most difficult markets to penetrate for Latin American children’s publishers, Mayobre identified Spain, “because it supplies itself and it is already saturated, and it has linguistic differences” from Latin American Spanish. She said that a publisher such as Ekaré would not have survived if it had had to rely on Spain as a market.

“For a Latin American publisher,” she said, “it’s harder to enter Spain than the United States.”

More from Publishing Perspectives on the international book publishing industry’s fairs and trade shows is here, more on children’s books is here, more on the Colombian market is here, more on Spanish-language publishing is here, and more on Latin America is here.