Interior of the El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore, in Buenos Aires.Anadolu Agency /
If there are more than 500 copies, it is necessary to analyze the ink with which they are printed to search for heavy materials, mostly lead.
If the amount is lower, an official permit is enough to approve your entry, but it takes longer than ever.
That is the double delaying tactic that the Argentine government has been using in recent weeks to stop the importation of Spanish books.
The main hypothesis points to the lack of foreign exchange in the context of the acute crisis that the country is going through as an explanation behind a measure that adds a new difficulty to the recovery of the Spanish publishing sector, which has its first client in Argentina: it concentrates the 35.2% of its exports, with a turnover of 73.6 million euros, according to the latest official figures, from 2018.
"This has already been shown to be absurd, all the tests were always negative or with irrelevant levels," says an Argentine distributor and importer of various Spanish publishers who demands anonymity.
The reference in the past motivates her that the bad ink control measure was already applied by Argentina between 2011 and 2015, causing it to take "up to two months to be able to get the Spanish books off the ships," he recalls.
The results of the analyzes were not a surprise either.
"Since 1995, a European directive prohibits the use of lead and other toxic components for inks", recalls Antonio María Ávila, secretary of the Federation of Publishers Guilds of Spain (FGEE).
"It is clearly an internal measure to save foreign exchange and protect its printing industry," she points out, in contrast to the statements in her country by the president of the Argentine Federation of the Graphic and Related Industry, Juan Carlos Sacco, for whom.
“Outside, many collectibles are printed that are sold in kiosks, the restriction aims more at that, to protect the printing industry,” says Pablo Braun, owner of the Argentine publishing house and bookstore Eterna Cadencia, reports Federico Rivas.
Although the resolution recovers the one issued in 2010, the Argentine importer began to detect a crucial nuance in its application since the beginning of June: “The permit, if you imported less than 500 copies, used to be almost automatic, it took just a week;
now they do not approve or they do it in a dropper, delaying between two and three months ”.
"Our distributor recommended us a few weeks ago that we stop a shipment," admits Joan Tarrida, general manager of Galaxia Gutenberg, concerned because the measure "comes in full preparation for the Christmas campaign and does nothing more than add uncertainty", in the context of the ravages of the coronavirus in the sector.
In his case, 20% of sales come from exports, of which Argentina takes "almost 7%".
The same fear expresses Eva Congil, general director of Anagrama, for which the Argentine market means "minimum 10%" of turnover.
Great readers
"The drama will be in if the entry permits for runs of less than half a thousand and more are not approved in publishers that sell a lot of funds," says Congil.
Of the majority of titles, Spanish publishers export between 200 and 300 copies, which can be absorbed by a market such as Argentina, with large readership, but with delicate purchasing power.
For Tarrida, "the solution is to print more there, which is what these measures also seek in part, but it involves greater technical problems and investing more in promotion because you launch more copies and play it more."
For the Anagrama board of directors, "if you have Argentine authors in your catalog you can do a little better, but printing there means that you stop making those copies in Spain in the initial print run and, therefore, affects your profitability".
In Anagrama, for the Christmas campaign the bet is to launch Cristina Morales and Guadalupe Nettel with force.
The Mexican woman was scheduled to print La hija sola, her latest book, in Chile, but they will end up "doing it in Argentina."
Another detail is the quality of the Argentine printers.
"The graphic arts are less powerful than the Spanish ones and there are few that can work in digital for low print runs", admits the importer.
And it emphasizes the added costs, "considerably high", of exceeding 500 imported copies, such as the prior management of sending two copies for the analysis of inks.
If the situation is complex for literary publishers, it is "almost insurmountable" for children's book publishers, according to the same importer, since "they are very large runs, which are usually made in the Asian market due to costs and that, technically, the Argentine printers can hardly assume ”.
Braun confirms: "Those who find it difficult are those who print abroad, as in China."
If Spanish publishers do not dispense with the Argentine market, it is because "there is a hard core of readers in it, it is very stable in that sense," Congil believes.
But there is some consensus that bibliodiversity will suffer.
“In the famous Buenos Aires bookstores there is a lot of books made outside of Argentina;
If this continues for a long time, works by certain authors will not be seen because there are no Argentine publishers that can acquire these rights today and I doubt that literary agencies will chop them up in Spanish for each country because it would be risky ”, thinks Tarrida.
“The other time the measures did not cause major economic catastrophes, but they did favor the paradox of benefiting large groups such as Planeta or what is now Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, because they print here and put many more books in circulation, but of a certain type ”, exposes the Argentine businessman, for whom the solution will be, as then, in“ setting import quotas ”.
The FGEE has not received, for now, complaints from the editors, says Ávila, although he recalls that the Argentine measures "violate all international regulations" and do not rule out "notifying the official trade offices" and requesting "some diplomatic management ”.