We are recognizing, in new ways, how much of daily life that authors and publishers make possible and how much they make life under lockdown bearable.
Interview with Hugo Setzer, Piero Attanasio, Olivia Snaije, and Javier Celaya
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The applause rises from apartment buildings across Paris, every evening at 8 p.m. The acclaim is for the doctors, nurses and other first responders who provide care to those sickened by the coronavirus. The grateful ones are millions of Parisians quarantined in their homes under a national lockdown.
Parisians, of course, are hardly alone in this global pandemic brought on by COVID-19. Around the world, cities and even whole nations are shuttered and silent. Apart from the essential businesses of grocery markets and pharmacies, entire industries have lurched suddenly to a halt. Meanwhile, of course, hospitals swell with patients.
COVID-19 has given rise to a new, terrifying vocabulary from epidemiology and health: Social distancing. Flattening the curve. Super-spreader. We have become suddenly well acquainted with medical equipment: ventilators; PPEs; N-95 respirators. We are learning quite a lot these days about subjects few but the professionals ever gave much thought.
For those under quarantine, many with children out of school, the Internet is a lifeline, providing information, instruction and welcome distraction. We are recognizing, in new ways, how much of daily life that authors and publishers make possible and how much they make life under lockdown bearable.
In this special report for Beyond the Book, CCC’s Chris Kenneally visits virtually with journalists, publishers and industry analysts in France, Italy, Spain and Mexico.
To date, Italy is the European country hit hardest by COVID-19, with the deaths recently climbing over 10,000. Piero Attanasio of the Italian Publishers Association describes an industry in severe contraction with impact across the supply chain.
“The expectation is a reduction of 25% of the number of titles. That means in Italy, since we publish around 80,000 books per year, it’s 20,000 books less and 40 million copies, more or less, which means that this has an effect that will be in the printing industries, in the paper industry, but also, of course, with the authors’ revenues and translators, which is another particular warning we have is translators,” Attanasio says. “We estimate that we probably translate 2,500 books less than last year, so there is a problem of revenues for all the employees around – all the professionals along the value chain from the beginning to the end, including, of course, the bookshops.
From France, which began a national lockdown on March 17 that was recently extended to April 15, journalist Olivia Snaije relates the cultural dilemma of closing bookstores.
“There was a big discussion last week on whether or not bookshops were considered essential industries. And most agreed that they were. However, the Union of Booksellers put out a statement that the health measures weren’t secure enough to reopen their bookshops, even if the economic upset for them was great,” she explains. “There are 3,300 independent bookshops, which is so much more than in most countries. But this isn’t to say that they aren’t struggling as well and most of the big publishers have agreed to reschedule payments for bookshops and reimburse them immediately for returns.
In Madrid, analyst Javier Celaya advises publishers to heed the real lesson to be found in the dramatic shift to the virtual.
“I think this is a time to reflect,” he declares. “We, in the sector, for the last decade, have not really understood the power of digital. And I think now is the time to really reflect that the importance is not the format. The importance is the content. And if we want to have people continue reading, we have to really invest in this digital transformation in order to guarantee that the publishing sector has a future.”
And in Mexico City, International Publishers Association president Hugo Setzer hopes the crisis may strengthen the industry.
“We are seeing the importance of the publishing industry, how the publishing industry has been important to society since a long time, how publishers are responding with solidarity, with innovation, to the public,” he says.
