Barcelona Metropolis

23 April 2020. Like every year, Sant Jordi [St. George] has to slay the dragon, but this year the story has taken a different path and the enemy has mutated into a virus that cannot be seen with the naked eye nor does it eat a princess, but it has devastated the social and cultural landscape with no way out. The hero may even have to team up with the dragon to defeat the virus and wait for the sector to withstand its onslaught in order to resume the annual struggle, perhaps in July, perhaps in October. Or perhaps the knight will be able to save books with visits to bookshops in droves and a rescue plan that helps sort out the weakest link in the publishing system.

Sant Jordi has been and gone with the bookshops closed. The book trade did what it could, but the before and after are marked by uncertainty. Bookshops are one of the businesses permitted to reopen as of phase 0 of the easing of the lockdown measures. However, on the first day activity could be resumed, only one in every two businesses decided to raise their shutters, according to figures from the Booksellers Guild. But we do not know how many bookshops will have to close permanently once the lockdown comes to an end. There have been urgent initiatives such as Llibreries Obertes [Open Bookshops], revived ones such as Libelista, online sales by big retailers (Amazon, as well as Fnac, Abacus, La Casa del Llibre and El Corte Inglés), online orders, orders via email or telephone from independent bookshops and sales in newsstands and supermarkets. Every day that went by before the date, initiatives and campaigns were rolled out, including some bones of contention and some uneasiness about how they were managed, but it can be said that while they served to dress the stab wound, the wound is still open. Now the idea is to celebrate the big day of the book on 23 July, at the height of summer, with a cloud of viral uncertainty that will impregnate everything and invitations to the continued postponement of the celebration. If it doesn’t prove possible, word has it that it shall be moved to October. For some, it will be too late.

The President of the Generalitat Government of Catalonia himself assured that an endeavour would be made to help bookshops resume their activity “as soon as possible”. “A highly affected, devastated cultural sector had to be prioritised”, he added. It was therefore agreed a committee be established to draw up a rescue plan at a meeting with the Minister for Culture, Mariàngela Vilallonga, and representatives of the sector: Xavi Ramiro (APIC [Professional Association of Illustrators of Catalonia]), Bel Olid (AELC [Association of Catalan-Language Writers]), Àngels Gregori (PEN Català [Catalan branch of the PEN International writers’ association]), Montse Ayats (Association of Catalan-Language Publishers), Maria Carme Ferrer (Booksellers Guild), Patrici Tixis (Catalan Chamber of Books and Publishers Guild), Martí Romaní (Distributors Guild) and Jesús del Hoyo (Professional Association of Graphic Designers of Catalonia).

Today, in the face of uncertainty, the sector is holding its breath. How will the lockdown progress? What will its consequences be? After the first few weeks of the easing of the lockdown restrictions, will people remember that culture in general and books in particular have helped them get through it, and will they flock to bookshops en masse? If, with a view to overcoming the pandemic, it has been us citizens who have been responsible by staying at home, will we also take responsibility for the recovery or will we expect governments and institutions to be the ones to fix everything? There are certainly no answers.

For the time being, this weak link in the chain makes the heart strong. Montserrat Úbeda, manager of the Ona bookshop, which was supposed to open in April to be filmed for Sant Jordi, explained that, “this lockdown will be good for us to reconsider the way we buy books and how we consume overall”. Lluís Morral, from the Laie bookshop, believes that at least this year “they have been saved”, partly because readers have directed their orders online like never before. Others, such as Isabel Sucunza, from the bookshop La Calders, tweeted that if they managed to overcome the suspension of “santjordi “ (relatively), it was because of that. A few years ago we decided that the stall for that day would always be set up in a place (the Antic Teatre) far from the madding crowd to keep in touch with our regular customers in a setting that would make it easier”.

Urgent reconversion of the sector

And finally, in the long run, a reconversion must be undertaken: “Once we have rescued and reinforced the sector so that it returns to something resembling normalcy, we must tackle reconversion. These measures must start being rolled out over the next twelve months, to be completed over two years”. A thorough reconversion like the one for books is not summed up in a few hundred words, but Ruiz Domènech points out the key aspects.

Firstly, reforming the institutional system of guilds and associations must be addressed; it should be simpler, more democratic and horizontal. Secondly, the obligation and free use and participation in information tools such as LibriRed and DILVE, among others, must be established. Thirdly, a book indicator system needs to be developed that publishes monthly data in different ranges and subsectors, following the German and Brazilian examples (among others). Finally, a plan must be drawn up for the industrial and commercial reconversion of books, with a series of measures that achieve the following goals: discourage the publication of new books and moderate the pace of publication; measure and reduce the number of live titles; encourage publishers’ adoption of technologies and processes in favour of efficiency; streamline distribution verging on zero stock through the application of on-demand printing technologies and processes already available on the market; encourage audience management by publishers and booksellers; and also promote the closure of bookshops with a smaller social and cultural contribution.

However, Ruiz Domènech is convinced that the sector will get through this, albeit very affected, “more than other large European markets such as Germany, France or Italy, because the profitability and liquidity of the Spanish market are much lower, even in comparison with the Italian one. In a year we will see quite a few bookshop closures, some publishing house closures, some medium-sized distributors might even have to lower their shutters. Besides that, recovery will be very slow. We can't wait to resume activity where we left off, the pace will be slow. If nothing else happens, we will spend autumn recovering and we might have a pretty good pace by Christmas but in any case, it will take us a year to regain lost ground. In addition, publishers are postponing releases and the purchasing of rights, so this will go slower too. Now we will see releases that were pending before the lockdown and we may have a certain sense of normalcy, but it will be by mere accumulation”.

The technological element

In any case, Ruiz Domènech rates the proposals being made by the sector itself as “voluntary, but short-lived. They’ve seen uneven success that will help some a lot but the majority very little. It is normal. Not all bookshops, for example, have entered this crisis with the same tools. Some have been able to activate their communities, and some haven’t because they’ve never worked hard on that. In a context of lockdown, the technological element has weighed heavily and it has been evident who had taken care of social media, communication, online sales, and who had not. This does not ensure viability but allows us to tackle the problem differently, with more options”. In addition, “not much can be said about the role of authorities because they hardly do anything useful. Compared to France, no entity, except for some municipalities, such as Barcelona, have put money on the table to buy books in bookshops earmarked for libraries, a wise decision because it strengthens the weakest link. I miss, at least, replicating what is done in France, tailored to us and to our resources”.

Looking to the future, “the distribution of paper books will have to diversify its range of services. Some distributors have already begun to do so, but most, for example, do not offer custom printing services. We also have to ask ourselves why my digital book distributor informs me, with a delay of just 48 hours, of the sales of my ebooks (and if I manage it directly with Amazon, I am informed the same day) and most paper book distributors do so at the end of each month and not on firm sales by readers, but just on bookseller orders. The traditional value chain hasn’t done the homework for ten years. There has been progress, but not enough”.

As regards bookshops, he believes that their role – which the newest and the ones that were able to reconvert are already doing – is to be cultural warehouses. “The main product will be books, but surrounded by cultural offerings without which the business will not be sustained. There will be fewer of them, and with the exception of chains and department stores, bookshops will be smaller. I don’t think radically new proposals will emerge during the lockdown. We will see the continuation of what we saw up to Sant Jordi, little else. It isn’t bad, but we shouldn’t fall into triumphalisms: even Llibreries Obertes, which now works well and has sold about 50,000 books, has yet to sell since 23 March the equivalent of two normal billing days before the crisis. Hopefully, 10% of what would be normal is being sold. It’s a catastrophe.”

A catastrophe that will force the doors to open, wait for liquidity to be pumped into the system and for readers (respecting social distancing measures, needless to say) to fill bookshops so that value flows to all the links in the chain of the publishing sector. Thus, perhaps St. George, the princess and the dragon, will defeat the lockdown virus and resume the fight not next year, not in July, not in October, but day after day.