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Q&A MARISOL SCHULZ


Q&A MARISOL SCHULZ DIRECTOR, GUADALAJARA INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR Life begins at thirty


As Mexico features in a series of events in its capacity as 2015’s Guest of Honour, the UK will play a reciprocal role at the Guadalajara International Book Fair later this year. Felicity Wood speaks to its director


Felicity Wood: The Guadalajara International Book Fair (Feria Internacional del Libro [FIL] Guadalajara) is the largest book festival in the Spanish-speaking world. How has it grown into such a huge publishing event? Marisol Schulz: Next year will be our 30th year, which is wonderful. It has grown a lot in that time. It was established and is still run by the University of Guadalajara, and even though back then it was a smaller project, it started in a very professional way and very quickly became the best place to access the Spanish- speaking market.


I think our close location to the US helps


us. We started initiatives such as inviting US librarians over, because US librarians need to buy books in Spanish for the large Hispanic [population] but not all of them speak the language, so we really plugged into that gap. At the same time, Mexican and Spanish publishers knew the interest in buying books in translation was on the rise. I have been the director of FIL for two


years and a publisher for 35 years [Schulz was editorial director of Grupo Santillana], so I have been to FIL every year and can tell you the ways it has grown from both an outsider’s and an insider’s perspective. It started off not really that international, with just a few publishers from Spain, but now we have publishers coming from 44 countries—and not just Spanish-speaking countries. We have an International Pavilion, which is growing with every fair.


FW: What makes FIL stand out? MS What makes FIL unique is that it lasts nine days, with a general attendance of 800,000 visitors, and for three days it is open only for book professionals during the day. In our three-day trade show we have more than 1,900 publishers attend, with many


15.04.15 www.thebookseller.com


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