Barrett Publishing announces that in 2023 they will publish 8 books and not 10 in order to focus on «taking care» of their publications.

The independent publishing house Barrett has announced that in 2023 they will publish 8 books instead of 10 as they had been doing. Last Friday, September 12, two of its editors published a video on their social networks in which they shared the news in a humorous way. According to them, «in almost 90% of the cases, the life of a book lasts less than what «two ice fish last…», that is, the system makes that a book has no chance to be more than a month in a bookstore makes us sad and horrifies us in equal parts». For this reason, they have taken the decision to stop the pace of publication in order to «take better care» of the novelties and the books that have already come out and have not had the life they wanted.

Rentrée ni rentreé, basta ya de rentréé… ¡A mover fondo!

En este vídeo os anunciamos algo importante. pic.twitter.com/tFixvq0s7j

— Editorial Barrett (@LibrosBarrett) September 9, 2022

This is the full statement:

«We are slowing down, and what does that mean? It means that in 2023 we will publish 8 titles a year, instead of 10, as we have been doing. And why are we going to do that? Because, for us, quantity does not equal quality, and if we are going to do something, we are going to do it well and defend some values in which we still believe.

Are we tired? Not exactly, but since 2020 Barrett has been a hotbed of good news. Panza de Burro has marked a before, and after in this space race, we started back in 2016 and, since then we’ve done nothing but learn from mistakes and push ourselves. Gladly, all said and done, but in these years we have gone from almost not existing on the publishing map to having our books awarded, to participating in countless talks and book clubs, we have also published some books on the other side of the pond, we go to all the fairs we can, and we have been lucky enough to be able to take a gamble with some expensive and complex works to produce that had been hanging around our heads for a while.

These have been years of unbridled activity, and when we stopped for a while, we realized that maybe we were not taking care (or taking care) of some things as much as we would like to. The pace of literary novelties has become unbearable and really stupid for publishers like ours and the eternal struggle to keep up with it prevents us from doing things the way we like: with passion, humor, and dedication. Media Vaca publishers say they don’t publish more than three books a year, at Barrett, when we grow up, we want to be like them…

And, of course, we’re toast. You know that in almost 90% of the cases, the life of a book lasts less than what «two ice fish last…», that is to say, the system makes it so that a book has no chance of being in a bookstore for more than a month makes us sad and horrifies us in equal parts. In our catalog there are some really great books, I’m serious, and they accumulate in a warehouse, you could almost say that they live in darkness and dust and that they have been forgotten, covered by the indiscriminate practices of the big groups. Shit, the fat cats… we didn’t want to name them in this text, but we need to break with that dynamic, rescuing our books from the bottom of the sea to give them a second chance, who doesn’t deserve a second chance?

This is why we have taken the decision to slow down the treadmill and slow down a couple of gears because walking you can appreciate the landscape much better and, if we are going to continue making books, which is our intention for many, many more years, we don’t want to end up all sweaty.

For those of you who know how this literary world works, this decision has not been easy at all at an economic level, the book bubble is like a slot machine, everything is fine if the three strawberries come out. Trying to get out of this economic bubble, which is the book chain, is a real audacity that some of our fellow professionals are already doing. Will we go bankrupt in the process? Will we be forgotten? Will we have to turn back? We have seen, from experience, that in this adventure nothing is written, not even in the layout, and for us, it is worth trying.

Thanks for reading us, strength, and let’s move the fund!»