Jordi Ferré: "We have sought out niches in the market where we can be a benchmark and be known."

In 1996, Jordi Ferré founded Cossetània Edicions in Valls, which over the course of three decades has carved out a niche in the Catalan publishing scene and become a benchmark in fields such as hiking, cooking, and nature essays. For several years now, he has formed a group with other publishing houses. Publisher. It publishes one hundred titles in Catalan and twenty in Spanish each year.

— With the expectations of each year. We have new releases of our main projects. There are two books that we are promoting the most. One is by nature writing, Shepherds and flocks, with interviews with various shepherds from across Catalonia, a work that is being lost. Another important line of work is cooking, and we publish Fork breakfasts, with the aim of recovering traditional Catalan cuisine. The author is the one who created the app of the same name, with thousands of downloads. In the more casual essay genre, we published a book of the Instagrammers From Can Putades, with over 100,000 followers. They're three girls from Olot who went to study in Barcelona, and they explain how they see the city from their perspective. Here's a brief summary.

They have established themselves in niches such as hiking, cooking, and nature essays.

— I like to say we're a generalist publisher that's sought out niches where we're a benchmark and known. We're a leading publisher in nature essay books. We've translated the world's best writers in the genre and award-winning books. We accompany this with nature guides. We've already sold more than 25,000 copies of the 125 Birds foldout.

They are also a reference in the kitchen.

— Yes, but it was easier before. When we started, if you wanted to make noodles, you had two options: ask your mom or grandma, or you Google it and find a hundred ways to make noodles.

They have had to evolve.

— The first question we should ask ourselves when we receive an original is whether it's already online. If it's there, there's no need to go online. We've had to adapt to new technologies. Before, to go on a hike, you had to take a guidebook and a map. Now there are other mechanisms, and the guides we create must be different.

What added value do they provide?

— We've now published a book that includes excursions to shelters in Catalonia. If you search online, you'll find many things, but what we do is curate a book about the lighthouses of Catalonia.

If we broaden our focus, what is the current situation of the publishing sector?

— The data shows that the publishing sector in Spain is growing. We can't say the same about Catalonia. We're not losing, but we're not growing either. One factor that explains this difference is that a significant percentage of newcomers already know how to read in Spanish. No immigrant can read Catalan when they arrive in Catalonia.

Are there more publishing houses in Catalonia?

— At the Association of Catalan-Language Publishers, it was hard for us to surpass one hundred members, but now we've surpassed this figure. There haven't been as many publishing projects in Catalan as there are now. This is good, but it puts more pressure on the market. And it's positive that there's bibliodiversity, different types of books, because it will increase our readership in Catalan. Of every four books sold in Catalonia, one is in Catalan, but there are areas we don't reach. If bibliodiversity expands, we may reach more readers. When we launched the first edition of The secret life of trees, by Peter Wohlleben, this book already existed in Spanish. And we've published eight editions in Catalan. Creating a collection of nature books means that readers who wanted to read nature essays and had to read them in Spanish can now read them in Catalan.

A company like yours is a business, but they do a job for Catalan.

— We publishers are for-profit companies, but we are clearly cultural agents. Publishing in Catalan and for the sake of the language is extraordinary, because the book is the most important repository of the language. When I travel around the world and speak to people whose languages are spoken by few people, the first thing I ask them is: "Are books published in your language?" A language lacking authors, narratives, and publications is a doomed language. Publishing books in Catalan has been vital to the normalization of the language.

We talk about bookstores and booksellers.

— It's true that there are gaps in some cities, but new projects are opening up, and I'm glad. Let's look at Tarragona. In Catalonia, there's a difference compared to the rest of Spain, and it's a distinctive network of independent bookstores. And a bookseller is also a cultural agent. Many make positive discrimination against Catalan. We must highly value this network of bookstores. Different agents guarantee bibliodiversity. There must be chains, but their stores carry the same products, and the bookseller personalizes the bookstore, and that's a treasure. We must nurture this network. The fact that a bookseller school has been established with the university is interesting.

They'll be thirty next year. How do they get there?

— We're older [laughs]. We're at a point where we need to analyze what our future should be like, something we can do. The publishing world will have a future, and our group will have a future. In terms of non-fiction copies sold, we're third in Catalan. Only Ara Llibres and Columna are ahead of us. We have a significant market position. There's a future.

And all this from Valls.

— Cosetània Edicions is something that fifty years ago couldn't have been done from Valls. Without the internet and without logistics where it costs the same to ship a book from Sant Cugat to Barcelona as it does from Valls to Barcelona, we wouldn't have been able to do it. And this is important because other initiatives have emerged from outside the metropolitan area, and this helps to balance the country's culture. What previously could only be done from the metropolitan area can now be done from the regions. We're not a local publishing house, but we're present in a central part of the country, which is all of Catalonia. Through the synergies of proximity, we've provided the opportunity to publish authors from our regions, but not only that. And it also allows for cultural infrastructure outside the metropolitan area.