The sharp eye of Enrique Murillo, eternal editor and factotum of the master's degree in publishing at the UAB, put me on the trail of a new publishing house called Arde, which one of its students started with a partner and published the first novel by Karina Lickorish Quinn titled The Dust Never Settles. A powerful literary voice full of echoes that takes us into the turbulent head of a pregnant young woman, who returns to Lima to sell the old abandoned family home, but decides to remain among ghosts to the greedy displeasure of relatives and boyfriend.
The Arde publishing house started before the summer with the publication in Spanish of Lobos en las Islas, a book edited in Galician by Marilar Aleixandre. I meet with its editors, Eric Levit and Arnau Durán, at the large table of the Llibreria Finestres. Finestres is becoming a meeting point for the book world in Barcelona. The director of the communication agency Argumentaria, Susana Sánchez, is also there, accompanying the Mexican writer Emiliano Monge and journalists such as Anna Maria Iglesia or the versatile writing teacher, Carlos Luria.
Once located at the top of the community table, I ask them how they come to combust to start a publishing house in these times. Arnau Durán, more introverted and thoughtful, hesitates for a moment: “I don't know if this is the best time for a publisher…”. And Eric Levit, more extroverted and active, tells him with a smile: “But it's already done!”. They complement each other well. They explain to me that they met working as booksellers in Re-Read, which can be called low cost bookstores or second-hand bookstores of a lifetime. Arnau points out that “there you manage an incredible fund, far from novelty”.
I ask them what Arde is going to contribute to the avalanche of books being published. Eric, with conviction, affirms that “publishing books that were not brought to this country, queer literature or novel authors. We do not have the pressure of having to reach a critical mass of public, so it is a question of publishing very little but chosen. We are only going to publish what has moved us.” Arnau adds that “we do not intend to be a revulsive, but to do it in a different way. Make a publisher's catalog, that idea of the publisher Jaime Salinas, that you don't depend on the ups and downs of the market”.
The plan to publish without worrying about the market is so beautiful that I ask you a romantic question: where are you going to get your money from, or are you millionaires? Eric takes it with humor: “Millionaires? Unfortunately not". Arnau explains that “Eric translates and I'm still in the bookstore. We are classic millennials: you work two jobs and pull what you can from your circle of friends and family. “But we don't want to be an amateur publisher. For us, this is the main job, even if it is not where we get the most money from,” says Eric.
They already have their third book in bookstores, The gangster we're all looking for, by the Vietnamese poet, novelist and performer based in the United States, Lê thi diem thúy. For the start of the year, the book of stories is already prepared, with some stories that did not appear in the English edition and have never been published outside of Korea, by the writer O Chonghui. I ask them how they manage to find these unusual authors and Arnau explains that “you are pulling the thread of people who recommend certain authors, you investigate, you search the internet… digging is what I like the most”.
About the start, they are very happy with the impact they have had with the first books. I ask them what has been the biggest slap in the face of reality that they have taken in this beginning: “Discovering that sometimes you are competing with others. There is some author that we were very excited to publish, but it has been impossible, you see that you are a very small publishing house and that you do not reach certain places”. Arnau considers that “the fact that important publishing books are taken away from us makes us see that we were not on the wrong track. We are ants in a sea of sharks, we will do what we can." They'll be fine, they'll be fine. They are flying ants.
