Bruno Blog

This week we are in LBF, and being able to sell book Rights in such an amazing city is a privilege. Getting to see, once again, our publishers from around the world, many of them who are already friends is such a joy. Being able to talk face to face, realising they have fallen in Love with that author we fell in Love, and with whom we’ve worked so hard to make the rest Love as much as we do, it is extraordinary. However, translating our authors into foreign languages is not an easy task at all, since you have to be very cautious with the path you decide the title to follow, so that the sale is a massive success.

London this year has been so special since we have celebrated Francesc Miralles’ and Hector Garcia’s have been translated into 42 countries, but we have properly celebrated these amazing news with a special event in a Japanese tea shop, where the Authors revealed and explained their new and exciting project. This means lots of work, but it also means we’ve had the chance to meet some amazing publishers to whom we’ve been pleased to show the amazing material we gather such as Alejandro Palomas or Care Santos, that even though sometimes it is harder to sell in International Markets, they have achieved an faithful reading team in each country, because with hard work, patience and effort, anything can be achieved.

We are very excited with all the titles in our catalogue, and we thoroughly believe each and every one of it deserves to have its way and its space, although finding them is not always an easy work, but it is a work that through patience and persistence can definitely be achieved.

I’m sure there are many chances on the way, and we will not let any of them escape. We are back, with the trolley full of work, but looking forward to begin. Stronger than ever, ready to make our catalogue reach the stars. There we go!

This week Bologna Children’s Book Fair has taken place, we’ve taken a break, and now we are stronger than ever to face London. In May, we will travel to New York and we will also attend Madrid’s Book Fair, so great things are about to happen for sure. In our suitcases, we carry our authors and their novels, so that wherever we travel we find publishers all over the world that fall in love with our catalogue. We also carry our illusion, our determination, our hard work so that all together we can find the right place for our titles. The only way to succeed is through patience, we all know that, but the truth is we truly believe anything can happen, since we are truly confident with what we have. So I hope these holidays bring us back together full of good energy. The marathon has just began, we have trained and we are ready for it, and the best is we will face its final sprint with the best company: our books.

Attached here, our catalogues so that everyone has a perfectly matched title this break. Attached, also, the catalogues we have prepared for Bologna and London (specially prepared for the publishers who are looking for the best).

Have a nice break and remember the best company for a holiday is a book, or more than one.

We are on a countdown to Christmas day and there are only a couple of days left before the beginning of a very well needed break after this year’s last term. Now it is the time to remember all the good, to be thankful for it and to collect these moments, to keep them in our life album and to never forget them. For me, 2017 has been a year of reuniting with old friends and with friends that I though I’d lost, but we are back together, and we are stronger and better than ever. Life has given me a second chance and I’m not going to waste it, because as time goes by you realize your appreciation for the others keeps increasing and you become more selective with people you choose to be around you. Hence why having back one of my bestest friends and having new ones is great as it is having those who have been here for a long time and those whom we have shared loads of moments, so there are several reasons to define this year 2017 as the Friendship Year. As in Care Santos’ MEDIA VIDA, awarded with the Nadal award at the begging of the year, past memories and old friendships always come back, for the good or for the bad.

2017 has also been a year of self-improvement and personal growth, and because of books as Eva Sandoval’s TU PODER NINJA, I’ve been able to think and understand more easily that there is no need to fight to reach your dream. It’s also been a year full of knowledge, of searching and finding, and with Francesc Miralles’ and Héctor García’s IKIGAI, I’ve discovered what makes me move with more determination in this world. And in these pleasing reading moments I’ve had the company of amazing characters as Guille and Amalia, created by Alejandro Palomas to enter our lives and never leave, or Rebeca, Barbara Alves’ novel main character, whom I’ve laughed my head out with the company of a Nutella bottle on my bedside table. And many other vibrant novels by authors such as Paz Castelló, Susana Rodríguez Lezaun, Núria Pradas, Esther Sanz, Gabriel García Oro, Carmen Conde , Xulio Ricardo Trigo or Sílvia Tarragó who have made of this year a year full of good readings with elements I will for ever keep in my memory box all together with my memories of 2017, with a huge smile, because books are our journey partners in each and every sense, and I feel lucky to be surrounded by these wonderful gifts.

My suggestion is to fill this Christmas with books, they are not only one of the best presents we can give, because reading is living, understanding, educating, enjoying, thinking and having fun. So I add here the best catalogue so that you can pick a book for every loved one, they will be hugely thankful, for sure.

Merry Christmas and a Wonderful 2018 for all of us.

Sant Jordi’s Day is around the corner one more year, and I can’t stop saying how special it is for anyone who works in this business. A public holiday for readers, and a hard day of work for the publishing sector. At the same time, however, it’s a time for festivities and contained feelings, for you want everything to go smoothly and for each person to buy books they truly enjoy. A day when everything seems extraordinary and books, usually more invisible during the year, are the main event, the KINGS of a wonderful festivity where the communion between reader and author is complete. I don’t have the right words to express what we feel that day when one -or more! – book from the agency appears in the bestsellers lists. It’s an explosion of happiness and joy that you feel for the author, who has worked so hard and deserves the acknowledgement that they long for so much; for the public; for the publisher, who has launched it and has bet blindly for a title that is now succeeding; for the bookseller, who has recommended it… It’s such a long chain, all filled with people who has collaborated to make it possible that, when it works, the feeling you get is one of relief, calmness and unrivalled excitement. It’s an award to the effort and the work well done of an author and of all the others who have supported it.

However, for me, the most important thing on this day is that people feel excited when sharing a book with someone they love and that, with the help of one another, we try for great literature to reach the readers. I’m sure that many of these books, gifted with love, change the lives of whomever gets them. New readers are nurtured and become long lasting ones. Let’s live an intense April 23^rd, full of wonderful feelings, and let’s manage for books to accompany us the rest of the year as well. As we always say in the agency, books are the best travel companions in this journey that we call life, because they always add up, even if it’s something very small and simple. We’re convinced that there’s a book for every reader, and a reader for every book, the exciting part is to strengthen that union that, most of us, can’t live without. Reading is life and life without reading is way poorer, and it’s not difficult to enrich it with good stories that will surely fulfill us.

Happy year of the book and let’s celebrate April 23^rd next year with all the readings that have come along for the ride on this 201/2018 and that have shaped us into better people.

Our recommendations

• Media vida by Care Santos
• Los viejos amigos by Silvia Soler
• La rueda del olvido by Cari Ariño
• El alma de la radio by Angeles Doñate
• Respira, Rebecca, respira... by Bárbara Alves
• Bojos per la música dels 80 by Alfred Picó i David Picó
• El objetivo del crimen by Xulio Ricardo Trigo
• La escritora by Carmen Conde
• El imperio de los leones by Sebastià Bennasar
• Deudas del frío by Susana Rodríguez Lezaun
• Mi nombre escrito en la puerta de un váter by Paz Castelló
• El llibre de veritats i secrets by Ramon Gasch
• Avalon. Britannia 4 by Ana Alonso y Javier Pelegrín
• El ladrón de minutos by David Lozano
• Love in lowercase by Francesc Miralles
• La hija del capitán Groc by Víctor Amela
• Sueños a medida by Núria Pradas
• Etheria by Coia Valls
• El tiempo de la luz by Sílvia Tarragó
• La filla de Lilith by Glòria Sabaté
• Las bocas de la montaña by Isabel del Rio
• El hombre más rico del mundo by Rafael Vídac
• La dieta de los colores by Montse Folch
• Duérmete niño de Eduard Estivill
• Qué beber cuando no bebes by Meritxell Falgueras
• Aporta o aparta by Nika Vázquez Seguí
• Ikigai by Francesc Miralles y Héctor García
• ¿Y tu qué crees? by Eva Sandoval
• Se vende mejor amigo by Care Santos
• El club de los caníbales muerde a Drácula by Gabriel García Oro
• Thirteen Reasons Why de Jay Asher
• Illuminae Expediente_01 by Amie Kaufman y Hay Cristoff
• Love letters to death by Ava Dellaira
• The fault in our stars by John Green
• Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard by Rick Riordan

This long weekend I am visiting a friend in Punta Cana, and what draws my attention is that being in a resort you see many prototypes of people, but almost all foreigners who come to the pool and to dance, read. This makes me immensely happy, because part of their entertainment and enjoyment includes reading. They always find the time to read. Because, as we all know, the excuse of “I like it but I do not have time for it” is not true. Everything is a question of priorities, even in a paradisiac place like this where you can be lying all day and people serving you, or going on a hike and come back to the hotel extremely tired. The reading moment must be looked for, but who wants to have it, can have it. And it’s basic that if you believe that books are important to life, which I firmly believe, to set an example with practice, because it helps to those around you to look at books.

Many parents want their children to read, but they never open a book, so it is clear that it is difficult for them to like reading, unless they are already passionate about them naturally, which can happen, and it happens, but less often than we would like. So let’s try to find the best time to share it with a good book, I’m sure few could regret this modest advice, and, instead, they could start to like something beautiful and useful at the same time.

So today I leave for you all those who have children nearby, a collage of children’s books so that the Three Wise Men or Santa Claus can begin to help promote the habit of reading:

– Los detectives Ho. El desastre Ja (Edebé) by Care Santos, the third delivery of the Olmedo brothers. Between the three of them they try to solve small challenges of daily life. The first two books are El misterio Cro and El caso Hu.

–  El club de los caníbales muerde a Drácula by Gabriel García Oro (Anaya). Previously, the cannibals fled don Quijote.

–  Laura SuperChef. El mejor bocadillo del mundo, by Care Santos. Second adventure of Laura, who will face a great contest. Laura SuperChef. Cocholate was the first title, edited by Ediciones Bruño.

–  Also, you can choose one of the books starring Òscar and Nora (Se vende mamá, Se vende papá, Se vende Garbanzo and Se vende mejor amigo, edited by Ediciones SM). Its success has crossed borders and has reached Portugal, Italy and Korea among other countries.

To give a book is to give life, imagination and the entrance to different worlds where to get lost and find oneself to arrive to the real world with something more, always with something more. Therefore, gifts that offer something are the star gifts. Let us not forget about them.