The tenth edition of the Great Book Bargain Sale opened Tuesday at the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City. The event will feature the precedence of 200 exhibitors and more than 500 publishing houses, making the event a great choice to promote the circulation and sale of books, as well as an opportunity to promote reading among people of all ages.
The first Grand Book Bargain Sale was held in 2007 at the Tlatelolco University Cultural Center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), featuring barely 8 publishing houses. Starting in 2008, the event began to he held at the Auditorio Nacional. Between the years of 2008 and 2015, the event has been attended by nearly 900,000 people, a figure representing nearly 90 times the full capacity of the Auditorio Nacional, and totaling 69 days of events.
Since its inception, the event has invited independent publishing houses alongside known international giants. One of the independent publishing houses is Editorial Resistencia, which specializes in science-fiction and genre literature written by Mexicans.
Aldo Alba, editor at Editorial Resistencia, said, “We’ve been coming to the bargain sale since about six years ago. Being that Resistencia is an independent publishing house, with editions barely numbering in the 1,000 copies each, our books have a different shelf life that those published by giants such as Penguin and Random House. The life of those books is barely six months. Ours last about one to two years.”
The bargain sale is organized by the Culture Secretariat of Mexico City, the Auditorio Nacional and the National Chamber of the Mexican Publishing Industry (CANIEM). The event will feature several independent and established publishing houses and national and international distributors selling books at bargain prices, with discounts of up to 80 percent.
The event also offers the rare find for the consummated or amateur bibliophile. Among the thousands of titles available, it is still possible to find the occasional unlikely treasure. Some of the stands offer not just bargains on new books, but also old, no-longer-in-print books. That special feeling of finding the long-sought-after rare edition is only one of the joys offered by the annual bargain sale.
The event also features bigger, international publishing houses such as Alfaguara, Ediciones B and Penguin Random House.
Norma Martínez, sales representative for Ediciones B Mexico, said, “The process for the books we publish to reach the bargain sale spans several years. Most of them are old editions. We take one last chance with them before they are destroyed. This year, we are offering more than 300 different titles.”
