Havana international book fair leaves prints in Argentine publishing houses

 HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 27 (ACN) The quality of the human treatment of all Cubans and specifically those who made possible the 32nd International Book Fair and brought it forward in this 2024, is what Pablo Canalicchio, director of the publishing houses Salim Ediciones and Shinka Editorial in Argentina, highlights today.

Being this his second year at the Fair, Canalicchio, who is also the director of the publishing degree program at the University of Buenos Aires, told the Cuban News Agency that since he was invited for the first time and especially to the Professional Book Fair, he has received a cordial and pleasant welcome from everyone, including the public that attended many of his lectures, conferences, trainings, masterclasses and workshops.

In this regard, he mentioned that, having his own consulting firm, he has specialized in the publishing industry, and it was precisely his participation in a congress for booksellers and publishers in Argentina, which gave him the opportunity to strengthen ties with Cuba.

Some of the topics discussed by the Argentine director were publishing and the role of publishers, artificial intelligence, public policies and publishing, public policies for the promotion of reading, publishing in the digital era, the relationship between booksellers and authors, possible tools for types of digital publishers in Cuba, possible actions to improve the performance of bookstores, a training for cartoonists of the Vitrina de Valonia, among others.

For the expert, the biggest challenge as a publisher is to survive, to continue publishing books despite the regional and local paper crisis, and above all, as director of the publishing academy, to modernize the curriculum according to current needs and transform it into a degree that is not available anywhere else in the world.
Working regionally, let's say, Cuba, Argentina and all Latin America together, in this very bad economic period for both countries and the region in general, is essential, and requires promoting reading through activities like the Fair and tools like marketing and new technologies, which can help reduce those distances with readers, said Canalicchio.

There are bigger events and with more people, but Cuba makes the difference for the warmth of its Fair and spaces like the Professional Book Fair, organized by the Latin American Literary Agency (ALL), a space that allows the meeting, joint reflection, training opportunities and business with new colleagues, publishers, artists, writers such as Brazil, guest country on this occasion, he concluded.