Self-publishers welcome at FILBo2019. If only all book fairs were like this!

2018 was a spectacular year for Latin-American book fairs, with record attendance and sales across many countries.

Take Colombia for example. Colombia’s flagship literary event, the Bogota International Book Fair, or FILBo from its Spanish title Feria del Libro Bogotá, last year attracted a crowd of 575,000, and across the country book fair visitors topped 1.5 million. Over 1.1 million books were bought at the Colombian fairs.

Who says Latinos don’t read!

FILBo has just put out the call for self-publishers in Colombia to apply for a prized place at this year’s international book fair that will give them the right to,

participate in the Book Forums and other professionalization spaces promoted and organized by FILBo.

FILBo this year runs April 25 through May 6, and the guest of honour country this year is Colombia itself, as the Colombia celebrates its 200th anniversary.

For the bicentennial event be prepared to see records broken yet again.

Follow FILBo on twitter: @FILBogota #FILBo2019

But it wasn’t just Colombia breaking book fair records last year.

In Mexico in 2018 no fewer than 548,000 people attended FILIJ, the Mexican children’s book fair, up from 400,000 in 2017. That’s an average of 50,000 people a day attending a children’s book fair in Mexico.

FILIJ’s bigger sister FIL Guadalajara just weeks larter topped 815,000 visitors.

Meanwhile FILVEN (Venezuela) clocked 643,000 visitors and FIL La Paz in Bolivia went one better with 575,000.

But the South America record went to Argentina, where FIL Buenos Aries attracted its regular 1.2 million crowd. It would be bigger but there’s literally no more room to fit anybody in!

Meanwhile just today comes news that FIL Havana, the book fair of Cuba in the sunny Caribbean, is on target to break last year’s record.

The Havana fair is held over the course of a month and across the country, but the primary festival event in Havan itself has just wound up.

So far — and remember, this is just for the capital — book sales amounted to 409,395, 5,000 up on same time last year.

Visitors so far have totalled 385,000, up 21,000 on last year.

On Saturday February 16 a new record for one-day attendance was set with 100,651 cramming into the San Carlos de la Cabaña fortress.

According to the official count, about 100,651 people attended the fair on Saturday, February 16.

The fair now moves to the provinces until April 16 when we’ll see if the final tally can beat — you might want to be sitting down for this — the 1,292,744 books bought by the 2,147,000 visitors to the Cuba book fair in 2018.

The global book market — it’s so much bigger than you think.

P.S. — In case you’re wondering how to reach readers in these countries, or if your’re in these countries and wondering how to get published and sell yur books around the world, yes of course we can.

StreetLib is there for authors and publishers wherever they are in the world, to help them sell books anywhere in the world.

StreetLib — your global gateway aggregator for the 2020s.