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Last March, something unheard of happened: the publishing sector halted the launch of news a couple of days after the state of alarm was decreed. After a Book Day without new titles, the sector is already preparing to say goodbye to the parenthesis and re-grease the publishing machinery after the announcement that the bookstores will reopen, although with restrictions, next week.

According to the gradual de-escalation plan presented this Tuesday, the bookstores may reopen their doors on Monday, May 4, as they are considered retail. In the first stage, the so-called phase 0, there will be certain restrictions: they will have to offer an individualized and preferential attention schedule to those over 65 years old and incorporate a protection system between client and worker (in the Ministry of Health they indicate that a screen or a counter).

In the next phase, which will arrive in the best case on May 11, the bookstores will be able to admit customers inside as long as they do not exceed a third of their capacity (this figure will increase as the phases are exceeded) and that the distance between them is a minimum of two meters.

May is, then, the month of the expected return and almost all publishers agree that many more books than usual will be published this summer. A strong rentrée and autumn are expected , despite the risk of saturating the bookstores, which now face the challenge of adapting to the new security measures. What remains on hold is what the promotion will be like with the authors if travel is still as limited as before.

In Anagrama the pandemic left in the air the departure of Los combatantes and Introduction to Teresa de Jesús from the Cristina Morales National Prize for Literature, The secret of Massimo Recalcati's son , A dacha in the Gulf of Emilio Sánchez Mediavilla (the first Anagram Prize of Chronicle Sergio González Rodríguez) and Mi seditious heart by Arundhati Roy.

"We are organizing the programming anticipating a cut in the novelties that avoids the saturation in autumn , and we have to program novelties during the month of July. Important titles such as the new novel by Amélie Nothomb ( The Epicene Names ), the one by Martín Kohan and the Paloma Díaz-Mas, the recoveries of the works of Cristina Morales, the debut in Anagrama of the Chilean author Benjamín Labatut, the new novel by Federico Jeanmaire ... They are titles that have been pending to reach bookstores and that we will be reprogramming in the next months and giving them the space and care they deserve, "explains editor Silvia Sesé . "As for the rentrée, we will be seeing the most appropriate dates to publish, with guarantees of good promotional work, the new novel by Sara Mesa, Un amor and that of Guadalupe Nettel, The Only Daughter , among other great works."

The publishing house founded by Jorge Herralde has been one of the first to react to today by hiring Slavoj Zizek's Pandemic , which is considered the first theoretical approach to the coronavirus crisis of the famous Slovenian thinker. First it will be published in an ebook, next May 6, and in book format, in principle, on May 20.

Sandra Ollo, publisher of Acantilado and Quaderns Crema, has decided to postpone some titles until 2021. " Piling books in bookstores would only harm books, which would run out of space , and bookstores, which would be overwhelmed. La rentrée this year will be more important but for the symbolic value that it will acquire for everyone. Acantilado does not publish circumstance books, so I believe that the titles that come will be a very pleasant company for the readers, "he explains.

The fear of crowding bookstores has also postponed next year some Roca Editorial titles, although its editor, Blanca Rosa Roca, confesses that she is considering May 21 and 28 as dates to recover those titles that were going to come out in April. . "We have been running the titles, but we have also postponed several books until 2021, we do not want to fill the bookstore channel with too many books and we do not know what the behavior of the readers will be either. I hope that Sant Jordi and the Madrid book fairs and other cities, re-fill the streets and encourage the purchase of books, "he explains.

One of his big bets scheduled for June is Ronan Farrow's Predators , "which reads like a thriller" and José Sanclemente's Regeneration on "new politics, new media and real estate corruption." "For the rentrée we have the new novel by John Verdon, which we are translating and it still has no title, a crime novel by Elia Barceló, La noche de plata , and a thriller by a Swedish author of Chilean origin, Pascal Engman, Tierra de Fuego "he details.

The date chosen for the return to the "new normal" at Penguin Random House is May 28 , when it will hit bookstores. This is the pleasure of the American Mary Gaitskill, finalist of the National Book Award, a post #MeToo novel about an influential publisher. New Yorker who is accused of sexual abuse and the latest from Norwegian king of noir Jo Nesbo, Blood in the Snow . "With bookstores closed two months, inevitably many books have been delayed, and it is unfeasible to publish in four months what you were going to publish in six , beyond the uncertainty about how libraries and readers will emerge from quarantine," explains the editor Miguel Aguilar.

"In any case, there are strong books for when the quarantine is over, there are strong books in the fall and there will be strong books in 2021. The rentrée will be important, but with the limitations of author travel, the obligation to reinvent the promotion will be very interesting, "he adds.

Aguilar highlights Santiago Amigorena's new novel The Inner Ghetto , which has been a great success in France (to be published on June 4), about the life of Vicente Rosenberg, a Jew who left Poland in the 1920s to start a new life in Buenos Aires written by her grandson and translated into Spanish by Martín Caparrós, Amigorena's cousin. Also noteworthy is A Hipster in Empty Spain by Daniel Gascón, Orlando Figes ' The Europeans' Essay and David Quammen's Contagion on Pandemics. The final biography of Ian Curtis will arrive in June when the 40th anniversary of the end of Joy Division will be celebrated by Jon Savage, one of the most renowned British music writers.

The virus froze many promotions that will resume as soon as normality returns. It is the case of And Julia challenged the gods Santiago Posteguillo or The temptation of the leader of Juan Eslava, they explain from Planeta. " Other authors have updated their books on the fly as Marta García Aller, advances in Unpredictability many reflections on what our future will, following this pandemic. It also Beatriz Robles has written specific recommendations for this new situation Come insurance, eating everything. And Michael Osterholm, the epidemiologist who anticipated the Covid19 with the threat deadliest , who has also updated its content for a new translation that hired when cases of coronavirus began to grow , "says Belén López Celada, editorial director of Planet fiction and nonfiction.

"This confinement has been inspiring for certain authors, so there will be a few more surprises," he adds. For May, Celada highlights the new novels by Blue Jeans, Mónica Carrillo and Sonsoles Ónega, "who, from being stars of Sant Jordi, will become stars of the new rentrée ". " The summer reading campaign this year will be relevant, " he predicts.

Alfaguara will publish on June 3 The Enigma of Room 622 , the new and awaited book by Joël Dicker, the author of the phenomenon The Truth about the Harry Quebert case , which for the first time places the action of one of his thrillers in his Switzerland native. Tusquets has left for June the Comillas Prize for biographies, which this year has gone to one of Yolanda Arencibia by Benito Pérez Galdós, coinciding with the centenary of his death.

Not everyone trusts the full restoration of normalcy for this summer. In Lumen, for example, they have postponed until September 1 the launch of Elena Ferrante's new novel, The Lying Life of Adults , set in the bourgeois Naples of the 90s. That is the date for its worldwide release. At the moment.

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