Luis Solano: “My mission is to read bad books so others can read good ones.”
It was May 2005 , and Spanish bookstores received, among the dozens of new releases of the month, two different titles: In Search of Baron Corvo and In the Hunt for Love, from an unknown label called Libros del Asteroide . Behind those copies was a unique man: trained in law, he had specialized in business administration and had worked in Barcelona for Planeta on a project related to e-books. With that capital and some cash, he launched into publishing books that, above all, he would like . His name is Luis Solano , and two decades later, he seems satisfied with the journey. He has published more than two hundred books that he likes, he managed to turn an adventure on which he had bet his savings into a company that today employs several employees, and, above all, he is happy.
Solano came to Buenos Aires just before the Book Fair to strengthen his publishing house's connection with readers, authors, and booksellers on this side of the ocean. Despite the ups and downs of the Argentine economy, he's committed to this market, which interests him even though it's more complicated than Mexico, where he also distributes his catalog. Books by American journalist and filmmaker Nora Ephron ; those by Rachel Cusk , eagerly awaited by his readers; the unforgettable Hamnet by Irish author Maggie O'Farrell ; among many others, populate an enviable collection.
In a bar in Palermo, deserted because it closes before noon, Solano spoke with Clarín about those books, united by a composite band, exquisite workmanship, and small flowers as a hallmark, the work of the Catalan Enric Jardí.
–You studied law and then business administration. Why did you dedicate yourself to books?
As a child, I loved reading, and books continued to be an important topic during my law studies. I also loved writing, but I didn't see myself as talented enough, so it didn't occur to me that I could have a professional career in that field because studying literature offered few professional opportunities. So, literature could be a hobby, and after finishing my degree, I decided to pursue a master's degree in business administration, which allowed me to work for years in consulting and at startups related to the telecommunications world. Through that job, I ended up at Planeta to help them launch their e-book business. That experience helped me understand the economic mechanics behind the book world, and I thought maybe I'd give it a try: "I'll invest a couple of years here, along with these savings. If it goes well, great, and if it doesn't, no problem," I told myself. Some time later, I realized I'd found my calling.
–You say that at Planeta you were able to learn about the book business. What was that business like and how much has it changed?
–The economic aspect is quite stable. In Spain, we work with a discount of approximately 55%. The publisher receives the remaining 45%, of which 10% goes to the author, and the publisher keeps 35% of the sale price. With that, they must pay for the edition, the printing of the book, the advance to the authors of subsequent books, and other expenses. If we're talking about a foreign novel, you need to print 3,000 copies and sell half of them to be profitable. If it's a Spanish author, with 700 or 800 copies, I can perhaps recoup the investment. For all that, when I started the publishing house, I knew it wasn't a business to get rich, but rather that I thought I could make a living from something I enjoyed doing, and things have gone well. Twenty years later, we have a team of eight people in the publishing house, and things are going well. What has changed in that time isn't so much the economics of the sector, which remains quite stable, but rather the way books are distributed and the competition they face. When we started publishing books in Spain, there were five television channels, no social media, and most media was read in print. Now, however, virtually all information is consumed digitally, with television being streamed, and social media taking center stage. As publishers, however, we have been fortunate that reading continues to be a refuge for people, allowing them to isolate themselves from the noise generated by digital technology. Beyond that, we must continue to seek out books and reading material that illuminate the present for readers and help them think about it and make it better.
Luis Solano founded Libros del Asteroide 20 years ago. Photo: Guillermo Rodríguez Adami.
–While the market tends to fragment by literary genre, age, gender, or masculinity, you maintain a single collection. Why?
–From the very beginning, the publishing house was conceived as a publisher that wanted to produce literature, that is, books with literary value. The idea I had, and still have, is that a reader, when they go to a bookstore, wants to be told a story. And Libros del Asteroide is a publisher that offers books that tell good stories, and it makes no sense to segment them, to use a different design depending on whether the story is based on real events or is completely imagined. That's the reason there's only one collection. Another reason is that the publisher wants to publish small but well. We're producing between 21 and 22 books a year, and we want to keep it there (between 20 and 25), which seems like a lot, but is actually not enough for a publisher that's been around for so long. If we suddenly started publishing essays or very well-researched, thousand-page biographies, it would be a different kind of book and would probably have to be published in another collection. But what we do is very good, interrelated, very well-united within the same collection, and it would be a shame to move them to another collection. In fact, there's a very nice quote by Juan Ramón Jiménez that says that in different editions, books say different things. In other words, the fact that they're presented in this collection makes the type of reading you propose to the reader a specific one.
–Who chooses the books, and how do you curate a coherent series with such diverse authors?
–The curation is still mine. I have readers who have been working with me for a long time, and I have a person who works and lives in Mallorca and does a bit of sparring, but ultimately I'm the one who makes the publishing decisions. When I have doubts about something, I ask my team and we discuss, but I'm the one who has to be excited about the book. That's why I look for narrative books and I look for books that have opened my eyes a little to new realities, to new ways of looking at the world. The fundamental characteristic of an editor is curiosity, and I'm a very curious person. I'm interested in asking myself why things happen a certain way, I'm interested in understanding why things happen, and I'm attentive to anything that seems new to me and to sharing my enthusiasm for new things with others. In that sense, there is something I do see in the evolution of the catalog, which also has to do with the fact that my life changes and the things that interest me also change, although my job as an editor is always to read bad books so that others can read good books.
Perhaps there are books that we feel might be more popular in Argentina because the reader is a little different, a bit more sophisticated, a little more interested in form, while the Spanish reader might be more interested in content.
–In the early years, they had decided to publish works from the last 75 years that had been good. But at some point, they started playing the publishing game, buying rights, going to fairs, and that sort of thing. When did that happen?
–It was a fairly quick process, and it had to do primarily with two books that were the first contemporary literature we commissioned: Peter Cameron with Someday This Sorrow Will Be Useful to You and Angel Wagenstein with The Pentateuch of Isaac . Seeing that those books did well, I realized that if I liked a book, even if it didn't have the reinforcement of being considered a classic in its country, it would still be liked. Then, I began to feel confident that I could also judge manuscripts that hadn't been published in another country. This coincided with us having been working for five years, having relationships with agencies, having been going to fairs, and having relationships outside of Spain. That's when we started publishing more contemporary literature.
–Are there books that worked very well and others very poorly?
–A couple of examples from two authors: Robertson Davies, the Canadian novelist, and the Spanish journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales. We revived A sangre y fuego (Blood and Fire) , a book by Chaves Nogales, because other books by him were already working in Spain, and it sparked a kind of revolution around him. That's when you realize that, as an editor, you're looking at the world from a position that's well connected to what's interesting to society. Then, there are some books we've published early on, and you realize that because you're in a hurry or have to fill the catalog quickly, you settle for books you're no longer very sure about. Sometimes it happens. But in general, I'm rarely surprised, and if I am, it's with books that have done much better than I expected.
Luis Solano founded Libros del Asteroide 20 years ago. Photo: Guillermo Rodríguez Adami.
–What is the relationship with Argentina?
–I believe the Argentine public is the most similar to the Spanish one. At least for the type of publishing we do and for the books we produce, literature of a certain quality and narrative. For any publishing house of our type, Argentina is undoubtedly the largest market, although Mexico has a larger book market than Argentina. We had two attempts, one with an initial distributor that didn't work out for various reasons, and then we were lucky enough to find another distributor with whom we worked very well. So, we prepared an editorial plan for Spain and then adapted that plan a bit. Basically, in 90% of cases, we have rights for both countries. But we don't release everything with the same intensity. Perhaps there are books that we feel might be more well-received in Argentina because the reader is a little different, a bit more sophisticated, a little more interested in form, while the Spanish reader may be more interested in content. And what's more, I feel that the type of communication we do, how we present books, is very well understood in Argentina, while sometimes our design, which I find modern, elegant, and communicative, falls outside the communication codes of other countries.
–Can you give an example of books that have worked better in Argentina than in Spain?
–I can think of Leila Guerrero, but also Claus and Lucas by Agota Kristof, which has sold very well in Spain, but in Argentina it sold twice as much, which is a lot, and I think it has to do with the Argentine readership, due to the formal experimentation, the innovation. Another example of someone who works very well here is Rachel Casch, who is connected with this search for formal innovation, which is very characteristic of her literature. She works in Spain because the market is larger, but proportionally, she works better in Argentina.
–The publisher has a Non-Fiction Award, which was won by Argentine Solange Levinton with A Dream Made in Argentina. The Rise and Fall of Pumper Nic , a completely Argentine book. What do they do with something like that?
–The award project was born from the idea of supporting a non-fiction book. I thought there might be interesting projects that authors wouldn't dare to pursue because they didn't have funding. That was the idea behind the project, which is, on the one hand, to find topics that the jury finds interesting and an approach that has a literary bent. We've published books of all kinds: one about the Second Republic in Spain, which is very historical ( 14 de abril , by Paco Cerdà); one about animals, a very funny book ( Fieras familiars , by Andrés Cota Hiriart); one about insomnia, more essay-like ( El mal dormir, by David Jiménez Torres); and another more memoir-like ( Mi padre Alemán , by Ricardo Dudda). And then there's Solange Levinton's book, which sought to tell the story of a very powerful venture that was very successful in Argentina and was a metaphor for the country's history. We thought it could also serve to tell the Argentine history of the last 80 years, and that's what interested us. And we gave it the award knowing that it was surely a book that would make more sense in Argentina than in Spain.
Clarin
