who liked or were outraged by the novel, and who wanted to compare their affinities or to state their differences, hand in hand, with the author. Such a reaction would have been inconceivable, not just ten years but even five years ago.63
For some critics, the sudden appearance of readers in general and of consumers of novels in particular was part of an ongoing social change in the region. There is “an urban growth that justifies the existence of the genre,” Rodríguez Monegal explained, “the novel needs a society that reads it, an audience, an editorial field. It is no coincidence that precisely this boom of the Latin American novel coincides with the growth of cities, urban societies and therefore of publishers.” Indeed, by the early 1960s, the region’s population had grown from 140 million of two decades before to 211 million. Its expansion went hand in hand with rural exodus, improvement of living standards, increase of rates of literacy, and rise of disposable income for the consumption, for example, of literary books. In October 1965, when García Márquez had just started writing One Hundred Years of Solitude, Primera Plana magazine reported that in Argentina alone there was a 40 percent increase in sales from the previous year.64 A year and a half later, thousands of Argentine consumers were among the first readers of his novel.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, readers first and foremost started to imagine themselves as members of a larger cultural community thanks partly to general interest magazines and newspapers. Not only did these periodicals have print runs that were ten times larger than the average literary book, but also many crossed national boundaries. In them, publishers informed readers about new literary titles, too. Best seller lists started to become common practice to influence readers’ tastes, and critics like T. E. Martínez and Rodríguez Monegal developed a reputation as reviewers of mainstream Latin American literature. Simultaneously, in the region and Spain, a revolutionary publishing format made its appearance: cheap paperbacks.
Publishers designed paperbacks to reach the broadest audience possible. With the motto “The man who reads is worth more,” the Continental Organization of Book Fairs (Organización continental de los festivales del libro) launched in 1956 a series of book events in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela. This organization also published the collection Biblioteca Básica de Cultura Latinoamericana, which followed “an imperative need: to spread the fundamental books of Latin American culture.” It intended to do so by printing thousands of copies of affordable books. In Colombia, this collection planned to publish in 1959 twenty-five thousand copies of García Márquez’s Leaf Storm, which hardly sold its first edition years before. Thus, García Márquez learned about the forthcoming paperback revolution several years before the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, first released as a low-priced paperback.65
In Argentina, Sudamericana launched Piragua, its collection of pocket-size books. In 1958, its titles had print runs of ten thousand copies and were sold in bookstores as well as less conventional sale points such as newspaper kiosks (the same points where One Hundred Years of Solitude was sold in Buenos Aires a decade later). In 1959, Editorial Porrúa of Mexico, a popular publisher of cheap paperbacks, started its best-selling collection Sepan Cuantos . . ., dedicated to all-time classics with prologues by Latin American authors. In Peru, the Populibros collection, created in 1963, sold close to one million copies its first two years. And in Spain, Alianza launched the collection El Libro de Bolsillo (which literally means Pocket Book), while paperback sales of the collection Austral by Espasa-Calpe rose during the 1960s.
Another important change that helped to shape readers’ taste for Latin American literature was the creation of the book club Círculo de Lectores, which was inspired by the U.S. Book-of-the-Month Club and was founded in 1962 by the German Group Bertelsmann and Catalan publisher Vergara (the same year García Márquez contacted Vergara in vain to publish In Evil Hour). Researchers have shown that book clubs are platforms for the “sentimental education” of the reading middle classes. In Spain, this book club offered its clients a combination of best sellers and highbrow literature in attractive and affordable editions. Círculo de Lectores did so by creating its own network of agents and door-to-door delivery system. (Unsuccessfully, it tried to expand to Latin America in the 1970s.) Thanks to this book club, thousands of Spanish households saw New Latin American Novels delivered to their door for the first time ever. This was possible because Seix Barral and Balcells were on good terms with Círculo de Lectores from the start, and the book club began reprinting Seix Barral’s titles and literary works by Balcells’s clients. In 1966, Círculo de Lectores doubled its subscribers, from two to four hundred thousand. And in 1970, when it published its own first edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the book club was close to one million subscribers. In just three years, the Círculo de Lectores edition sold four hundred thousand copies. Since then, One Hundred Years of Solitude became a permanent title on its sales catalogue and one of its most profitable long-term sellers.66
A NOVEL ADAPTS TO THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
One Hundred Years of Solitude came out during a revolution of the Spanish-language publishing industry. In Spain, this industry had reached an unprecedented publishing peak of literary titles, surpassing the numbers from the United States, coming close to the United Kingdom, and closing the gap with France. Young and relatively unknown Latin American writers were experiencing aesthetic liberation, too. Publishers introduced modern strategies of book marketing. Literary agents were now negotiating better contractual conditions on behalf of their clients. Spanish exiles bridged the publishing gap between Latin America and Spain. The international audience for the New Latin American Novel was growing. And changes in readers’ taste asked for modern-looking and affordable paperbacks. One Hundred Years of Solitude did nothing to upset this new status quo in the publishing industry. In fact, it fully benefited from it and helped to consolidate it.
Before One Hundred Years of Solitude, García Márquez struggled to get his literary work published. He tried publishing it in Spain, Colombia, Mexico, and France, and in different formats: books, literary magazines, and newspapers. Not only did his early literary works circulate poorly, but he also faced harsh contractual conditions like most of his peers in the region. In 1962, Universidad Veracruzana published Big Mama’s Funeral, his first book of short stories. Its production ran into the customary obstacles so characteristic of the region’s publishing industry. By contract, the publisher “acquires the literary property of the manuscript . . . property rights that will stay in place as long as the University has more than one hundred unsold book copies.” The contract stipulated that the publisher could take up to two years to publish his book and that it would be in charge of distribution. Additional proofs of the publisher’s full control over the book were that it “will have, at all times, the right to make new editions of the book by just notifying the Author,” it prohibited him to publish any part of the work elsewhere, and it paid the author no subsidiary rights. These tough contractual conditions soon turned into the typical nightmare for Latin American writers. First, a happy García Márquez informed a friend that the book would have a print run of five thousand copies only to find out later that the contract lowered the amount to two thousand. After its publication, he complained that distribution was terrible: only one hundred and fifty copies were sold half a year later, and he had to distribute the same number among friends and colleagues. Three years later, he was still complaining about the publisher’s handling of the rights and pleaded Sudamericana to help him get the rights back. García Márquez’s sorrows were not over. The book, of course, was pirated. The supplement of Diario del Caribe in Barranquilla published Big Mama’s Funeral in 1964. As usual, he received no royalties.67
The poor circulation of Big Mama’s Funeral and most of his early works had, of course, nothing to do with their aesthetic quality and had all to do with the local and divided publishing industry in the region.68 The truth was that One Hundred Years of Solitude was set to face the same scenario. García Márquez had reached a verbal publishing agreement with Ediciones Era, which had four years earlier released in Mexico new editions of his novellas, No One Writes
