For the most part, publishers’ sites are utilitarian. They’re designed to present the books, provide some interest, stimulate some sales.

But in a few cases, you can at times discern something more. That “something” relates to the curatorial function that S. Fischer’s Siv Bublitz and Klett-Cotta’s Tom Kraushaar talk about along with other independent publishers. Bublitz likes the description of a publisher’s catalogue being made of “books that talk to each other.”

Do you know the Spanish press called Ediciones Menguantes? You’ll find it’s behind our last listing of the day, Breve Atlas de los Faros del Fin del Mundo or A Brief Atlas of Lighthouses at the End of the World by Jose Luis González Macías. Quite an unusual book, this is a work of both graphic and textual art. It’s a series of stories, said to be based in truth. Each is set in some relationship to a lighthouse. And there are plans, renderings, images of those lighthouses included in the work.

Quite an unusual publisher, too. In its description of itself, the house writes:

“We are interested in the small, the hidden, the shy. The footnotes, the failed constructions, the drafts, the studs, the pencil writing in the margins.

“Our publications will not be televised, they will not save relationships, they will not be bedside books for politicians. We prefer the stumble to the stride, the drift to the certainty, the detour to the destination; the slow pace, the blurred photo, the anti-heroic gesture.

We like that type of important book that in the publishing business, perhaps, does not measure up.”

From: https://publishingperspectives.com/2021/12/rights-roundup-text-and-light-from-the-end-of-the-world/

For foreign rights information, please contact us at edicionesmenguantes@gmail.com