Targeting U.S. Buyers

How International Publishers Move From Confusion to Profit

By Marcela Valdés -- Críticas, 9/1/2001

You could hardly have asked for a better metaphor. Five hundred publishers had taken a space the size of a small suburban shopping mall and strung it with enough eye-candy to make anyone dizzy. Steel booths, wooden booths, plastic booths. Track lighting, backlight-ing, and enormous banners in blue, red, and green. Some companies actually laid out plush carpeting. Everywhere editors, agents, and distributors bustled among the bells and whistles with emmet-like intensity. And off to one side, away from the heavy traffic of the center of the floor, stood two modest rows that represented the world of Spanish-language publishing. Where was everybody else? What had discouraged them from coming to BEA?

As the president of Editorial Troquel in Buenos Aires, Gustavo Ressia has traveled to BEA five times, and he's sold books to the United States on several occasions. When he's talking about something he enjoys, his face crinkles into a reluctant smile, but when he talks about the U.S. Spanish-language book market, his brow furrows in exasperation. 'I've sold books in the United States,' he says, 'but I've never been able to maintain a steady stream [of orders].'

Aside from the fact that his catalog is relatively specific (Troquel specializes in books for the educational market, although it also publishes trade editions of philosophy, poetry, and essays) and the fact that his books are rather expensive, Ressia believes the main obstacle he faces in establishing a solid business relationship with U.S. customers has to do with cultural expectations, what he describes as 'the difficulty an American buyer and a Latin American editor have in understanding each other, not because of a language problem but because of a difference in the style of business culture.' Pressed to be more specific, Ressia almost sighs. 'It's difficult for an American distributor to understand why we can't fulfill an order for 10 or 20 copies.'

In truth, some of the reasons why Ressia has trouble filling such an order are outside his control. Most of the orders he's received are called in for a specific conference, but he's often given only a week's notice to fill them, which leaves him with a difficult choice. If he sends the books by regular mail, odds are they won't make it in time, or a few copies will 'disappear' along the way, because Argentina's postal service isn't as reliable or as efficient as the United States'. On the other hand, if he sends the books through an international courier, the cost of shipping eats deep into his profits because Federal Express charges $70 to $80 to ship a nine-pound box from Buenos Aires to the United States. 'In the end,' Ressia explains, 'it's as if the buyer says to me, 'Well, I want to buy from you, and you won't sell to me.' And he says this to an editor for whom it's a headache to attend to such an order.' Yet Ressia has no trouble filling an order for Mexico or Spain, since in those countries he knows distributors who purchase 500 or 1,000 books at a time and who understand that a shipment (sent by cargo boat, at a lower cost) might take several weeks to arrive.

The problems Ressia has encountered--small orders, costly shipping, unrealistic expectations from American buyers--are typical of those faced by Latin American or Spanish publishers that try breaking into the U.S. book industry, as is his feeling that the sheer size and diversity of the United States make it a confusing market to tackle.

But, on closer examination, one sees there are things that Troquel, whose U.S. marketing campaign consists of sending out about 10 Spanish-language catalogs a season, could do to improve its sales in North America. Even Ressia admits that when the right connections are established exporting books to the United States can be lucrative.

'When, in a few cases, we've managed to establish a commercial link, then things go well,' he says. 'That's to say, we've sent them books; they've sold out the stock; we've charged them well. When the commercial link is established: beautiful. The problem is before that point.'

The first step a company must take in order to reach 'that point' is to designate a specific person to handle its orders from the United States. Depending on the size of a house's staff, and the size of its plans for expansion, that liaison may or may not deal with the United States full-time. But it's important that distributors, booksellers, and librarians have a set contact person to field their queries and deal with any problems that may arise. At the Mexico-based publisher Oceano, that person is Roberto Rivas, exports manager.

During the second day of BEA, Rivas and Oceano's general director, Rogelio Villarreal Cueva, met with Críticas to discuss the company's strategy for tackling the U.S. market. (Rivas has the easy friendliness of a natural salesman, and his large, owlish glasses and slightly-rumpled suit make a perfect foil to Villarreal Cueva's tailored appearance.) Oceano has been selling books to North American customers for only a few years, but the company has already developed a coordinated method for breaking into the market. Villarreal Cueva explains: 'The formula we're using is, on one side, to provide a service to libraries [and bookstores] so that they get to know our products and, at the same time, to close the pincer on the side of the distributors, so that the librarians can find a local server [that provides Oceano books].'

Oceano's application of the 'pincer' method relies heavily on visits, which Rivas views as essential to promoting the company's titles. 'You can't imagine how much these visits help maintain contact with our clients,' he says. 'Spending time with them and showing them the books somehow makes you identify with them more, so you work together better.'

Both Rivas and Villarreal Cueva believe that establishing good relationships with U.S. distributors is key. In fact, even when he visits a library or bookstore to show them physical copies of a book, Rivas will ask buyers to tell him which distributors they use, so he can point out which ones carry Oceano books. Rivas and Villarreal Cueva's reasons for preferring middlemen have to do with cost, service, and promotion. Some time ago, Oceano did an internal analysis that confirmed the conclusion Ressia reached at Troquel: When a company considers the cost of packaging, the cost of shipping, and the time it takes to assemble an order, it soon becomes evident that it's not cost-effective to fulfill small orders directly. Villarreal Cueva says, 'It would seem that using a distributor would be much more expensive, but we've done studies that show that that's not true.'

Rivas also found that the librarians he has sold to directly rarely become repeat customers, because there's no way for him to duplicate the constant communication that they have with their regular distributors. (And, perhaps, because he's using the Mexican postal system, there's no way he can replicate the fast service of a U.S.-based distributor.)

According to Villarreal Cueva, Oceano is seeing success with its pincer method. The next challenge is publicity. 'Some of the problems we're facing have to do with promotion and dissemination,' he explains. 'The United States is a segmented market. We've noticed that what works in one geographic area, like California, often isn't successful in areas like Miami, New York, Chicago, or Texas. There you have to make distinct publicity campaigns.' Oceano has been lucky enough to have had two books mentioned in the New York Times--Raúl Salinas y yo (Raul Salinas and I, Críticas, Spring 2001), Maria Bernal's memoir about her affair with the older brother of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas, and A los pinos: Recuento autobiográfico y político (The First Step: An Autobiographical and Political Recounting, Críticas, Spring 2001), a memoir by Mexico's president, Vicente Fox. The increase in sales from such mainstream, English-speaking media was instantaneous. 'The influence the media has is clear,' Villarreal Cueva says. 'It's fantastic. It stimulates demand.'

Leylha Ahuile*, vice-president and publisher of Alfaguara Miami, couldn't agree more. Alfaguara has the most polished stand in the Spanish-language Pavilion at BEA, a brushed steel structure filled with neatly organized, backlit books. The metal's cool gleam lends an authority to Ahuile as she declares, 'The relationship with the media is just as important as the relationship with distributors. It's such an instrumental tool, but it takes a lot of work.'

Since Alfaguara, a division of the Spain-based Santillana Group, opened its Miami office three years ago, its U.S. sales have skyrocketed. 'We started with 10 titles the first year,' Ahuile says. 'Then within a couple of months, we saw such an explosion; we were up to 30, 40. Now we have at least 200 titles in our [U.S.] catalog.' Alfaguara has found a way to circumvent the problem of shipping costs by opening its own warehouse in Miami. This allows the company to ship books in bulk from Alfaguara's offices in other countries and hold them until they are bought by distributors.

'A lot of distributors,' Ahuile says, 'are finding it easier and easier to work with us because they don't have to worry about the imports and the no-return policies that international publishers have--the books are there.' Ahuile adds that Alfaguara works with about 40 distributors, both large and small, on a day-to-day basis.

With its major distribution and shipping problems resolved, the office can concentrate on publicizing the titles it does bring in. Of the 10 people in the Miami office, one is dedicated full-time to managing promotional campaigns, which often involve bringing Spanish and Latin American authors to the United States for tours. Since February, they have toured five authors--Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, and the U.S.-based Edmundo Paz Soldán among them--and the house plans to bring over one or two more a month for the rest of the year. Classic boom authors like Fuentes and Poniatowska certainly draw big crowds, but the real point of an author tour, Ahuile says, is to attract media.

'People do tell their friends and so forth,' she explains, 'but the larger ramifications come out of the media. To the media, it's a lot more interesting to do a one-on-one interview with a person than it is to do it over the phone or over e-mail. To have pictures [of the author] for the newspapers... that helps tremendously.' Ahuile is confident that Alfaguara's publicity campaigns, which also involve buying print ads and sending press kits to both Spanish-language and English-language media, can have big payoffs. She holds up Marcela Serrano as an example of an author whom Alfaguara has promoted enough in the United States that, when her books come out, they're an automatic sell.

*[Since this interview was conducted at BEA in June, Ahuile has left Alfaguara to start her own publicity company, Promo Latino. See our news section181869 for more on Promo Latino and on Alfaguara's future plans.--Ed.]

Since Fondo de Cultura Económica, a university press run by the Mexican government, opened its San Diego office in 1990, it has increased its number of titles actively sold in the United States by 850%. During the past five years, the press sold close to 57,000 copies of one title alone--Gary Soto's Béisbol en abril (Baseball in April), a children's book aimed at the experience of the U.S. Latino kid. So, it's probably fair to say they are one of the companies that have had the most success in breaking into the U.S. market.

This success rests easily on the shoulders of Fondo's CEO, Benjamin Mireles, a tall man who has a tendency to tap his fingers on the table and cast his eyes about the fair as we talk. Mireles is a straightforward, no-nonsense man, but when his friends walk by, he waves and calls out to them to see what party they're going to that night. You can sense he enjoys a certain amount of camaraderie.

'In order to sell past your best-selling list, you need to promote it. And the distributors are not going to promote it.' This is Mireles's explanation of why Fondo took the bold step of distributing its own books in North America. According to Mireles, the outsource distributors Fondo once used would neglect the vast majority of the house's catalog, selling maybe 200 of the company's 6,000 titles. Since Fondo took over distribution, Fondo has increased the number of actively sold titles to 1,700.

Cutting out the middleman has also helped Fondo lower the price of its books, while opening a U.S. warehouse that holds $500,000-worth of stock has allowed the company to bring in bulk shipments from Mexico and to offer the kind of 48-hour turnaround normally associated with U.S. distributors. 'The most important thing in the U.S. market is to be able to [provide service] that competes with the service from U.S. distributors like Ingram and Baker & Taylor,' Mireles says. 'If we did not have a warehouse, we'd have to be like everybody else and do six- to eight-week turnarounds, which is not acceptable.'

Unlike Alfaguara, Fondo has concentrated its promotional efforts on the educational market. Mireles thinks the number of Spanish-language bookstores in the United States is still too limited to hold the opportunity for real profit, especially considering the academic nature of most of Fondo's books. According to him, not much competes with the effect of having a book added to several course lists. 'When a book gets picked up by the educational market,' he says, 'the numbers just go.' To reach the academic market, Fondo's San Diego office attends 18 to 20 conferences and fairs a year, and that's where it builds its main list of customers.

But Mireles keeps an eye out for other promotional opportunities, too. Frustrated by the lack of Spanish-language book coverage in the print and other media, Mireles recently formed an alliance with Radio Unica, which will soon dedicate an hour to the subject of books once every couple of weeks.

Right now, Fondo still imports all its books from the editorial office in Mexico City, but that may change, at least partly in reaction to recent evolutions in the U.S. Spanish-language market. 'In the beginning, the market was asking mostly for translations of recognizable U.S. authors, so that the teacher or the librarian wouldn't have to speak Spanish, but if they knew the author, they could pick it up,' Mireles explains. 'Now, more and more, they're looking for Spanish originals.'

Fondo is currently exploring the possibility of opening an editorial division in the United States to acquire books that specifically address the culture of the North American Latino--which doesn't necessarily involve Sunday visits for tamales at abuelita's house. Mireles believes that one of the reasons Soto's book has been so successful is that it's one of the few children's books to address Latinos' experience participating in typically American activities, like playing baseball.

Alfaguara has already moved into this second wave of Spanish-language publishing (its Miami office coordinates the translation and Spanish publication of several U.S. Latino authors), and some non-U.S. editors are sensitive to the change as well. Jesús Anaya Rosique of Planeta Mexico, for example, has already published several books that deal with cross-border issues, such as Barry Gifford's Bordertown. As Mireles says, people 'are looking for literature that they can relate to. It goes beyond just publishing in Spanish. [We] need to address a culture.'

As BEA progressed and the attendees settled in, it became apparent that there were many more Spanish-language attendees than it first appeared. Many small publishers hadn't reserved booths but brought plenty of business cards instead. And if those two isolated rows weren't as crowded as the main area of the floor, one reason was that many editors weren't staying close to their stands. They were out making forays into the larger market, looking for titles to translate and meeting with distributors in the convention's coffee shop. And when, on Friday night of the fair, Spanish-language publishers and editors finally did come together for a Críticas-sponsored sangria party, the row got so crowded that you had to be careful not to bump the glass of the person standing behind you. There were Siete Cuentos, Anaya, and Downtown Books. There were Planeta and Grijalbo Mondadori and Norma. And many, many many others. They were all there, working to make it work.