The 36th edition of the international book fair will commence next Wednesday in Barcelona, bringing together 10,000 professionals.

Religious and academic books are among the best sellers, as well as social sciences and children’s and young adult literature. Novelists and poets are scarce as the fair is predominantly attended by importers, distributors, booksellers and buyers of rights. At first glance, it appears to be a strange and unpopular event but, on the contrary, LIBER, the International Book Fair, is a vital part of the Spanish editorial industry, as almost a third of all the revenue from the exportation of bookshop books (around 100 million euros) is negotiated in the short three days of the most important Spanish-language industry fair. This is known to the more than 10,000 professionals who are predicted to attend its 36th edition, which will be held on October 3-5 at Recinto Gran Vía de Fira in Barcelona. A positive gage of the industry’s situation, the 7% increase in LIBER’s floor space reaches 3,000 square meters, and the 361 exhibitors from eight countries reflect the situation of Spanish literature itself, which registered sales of two billion euros in 2017, just a 0.1% increase from 2016, and growing for the fourth year in a row. Nonetheless, 25% of all sales that were lost during the recession are yet to be recouped.

Read more: EL PAIS