Publishing as a form of resistance

“It's as if an atomic bomb has fallen.” This is how David Malavé, founder of the bookshop and publishing house Kalathos, describes the state of the book industry in Venezuela. The local chamber of commerce estimates that the sector has shrunk by seventy per cent over the past fifteen years. The online magazine Ecosistema reports that in Caracas alone, ninety bookshops have closed. Transnational publishers such as Random House and Planeta left the country years ago.

“The few bookshops that still exist in Venezuela are acts of resistance,” says David Malavé, “which is why the drive of those who have remained in the country is so valuable.” He highlights book fairs such as Oeste and Filuc, and praises those, who despite everything, continue to publish books.

Books in Venezuela cost about as much as they do in the United States: usually the equivalent of between 15 and 25 dollars. But in Venezuela, the minimum wage stands at one dollar per month, topped up to as much as 160 dollars with state allowances. Nicolás Maduro's dictatorship is marked by a deep economic crisis and the political persecution of dissidents. “Almost 7.9 million people have left the country,” according to UNHCR.

“Publishers are forging new paths”

Do the people who have stayed in Venezeula still manage to read books? There are no official figures, but over the years of hardship, alternative ways of buying books have emerged. In Caracas, for instance, stock from old home libraries whose owners have emigrated is often taken over and sold online. This is what Javier Marichal does, speaking of these libraries as if they were places haunted by ghosts. “Some I barely dare to enter,” says the experienced bookseller, “especially those that I myself helped shape.” Some of the old books he finds are close to falling apart, yet still find new readers in the end. Marichal calls his Instagram shop “espacio.libro”, “book space”.

Many publishers, in their struggle to survive, are adopting new approaches. Against the trend, Círculo Amarillo was founded in 2024, based in Caracas and active in both print and digital publishing. Its founders, the journalist Blanca Hurtado Neder and the author Lizandro Samuel, both in their mid-thirties, have already published a handful of titles. Lacking capital, they devised a solution: each book is financed by a “production manager” or private investors, and these are almost always found in the workshops the editorial offers — creative writing courses with titles such as “Telling a Life in an Interesting Way – How to Write Biographies”. To get around the lack of bookshops, they sell and distribute their titles directly: by post within Venezuela as well as worldwide via Amazon, including on Kindle.

“The crisis here is immense,” says Samuel, “the number of people living in extreme poverty is around sixty to seventy per cent of the population. But rather than wait, we looked for ways to make a living from literature while keeping our joy in reading alive.”