Madrid (EFE).- The director of the Madrid Book Fair, Eva Orúe, confirmed today to Efe that all the publishers that have requested to be present at its 82nd edition, some 600, “are inside”, from the large groups with thousands of live titles in its catalog up to those with more than 25.
In statements to EFE, and one day before the draw that will decide where the publishers’ booths will be located, Orúe has announced that “all those who had submitted an application are inside” the Madrid Book Fair, which will be held its 82nd edition in Madrid’s Retiro Park from May 26 to June 11.
“The organization of the fair and the editors who met yesterday have made an effort to find an exit that satisfies everyone and everyone will enter, not under the conditions they requested, but everyone accepts them with pleasure,” he added.
Orúe refers to the fact that, specifically, four small publishers (those that publish between 25 and 80 titles a year) do not agree with the regulation that was approved last January and that marks the divisions according to their size.
A division of spaces that is marked by the number of published titles: those that bill more than 18 million euros per year in Spain and have a catalog of more than 800 titles -according to the internal book trade report- can count on a booth of 4 meters or those that have a catalog of more than 199 an individual of three meters.
In these divisions there is also the possibility of sharing a booth or giving up spaces.
“What the regulation says is that those who have a catalog of between 25 and 79 titles will go to a common area, not to a booth and there were people who considered that it was not acceptable,” he acknowledged.
And, as he has warned, the spaces for the booths at the Madrid Book Fair depend on “shifting ground.”
“In the regulations -he added- it is also indicated that the awarding of booths will be made according to wishes, but it will depend on the meters of the enclosure because we are aware that we play on a field that moves. We know that we start at the Puerta de Madrid and end at the Puerta de Venezuela, but if the trees grow we lose space, this year the strawberry trees also affect us”.
As a novelty this year, the publishers’ unions of Cantabria, Asturias, Castilla y León, Andalusia, the Valencian Community and Murcia will attend the fair.