Spanish author Manel Loureiro recounts his experience at BookExpo America, and how this fair, although very popular in America, is barely known in Europe.

“I have been in countless literary fairs across Europe, from the specialized London Fair to popular (and populous) Madrid Book Fair. But nothing compares to what the BookExpo America (BEA) has to offer. Everything is large, excessive, ostentatious, and terribly commercial. Very American, really. And despite its popularity across the ocean, it is almost unknown in Europe, except in specialized circles,” Loureiro recounts in a piece published by El Mundo.

“After publishing three books with them, my American publishers had decided it would be a great thing to appear in the BEA to give a lecture and sign a few hundred books. In a market like the U.S., the largest in the world and where only 3% of the books published are not Anglo-Saxon authors, a foreign author is a real rarity. And if you have also obtained commercial success even more.”

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