La Esfera de los Libros (The Book Sphere): 15 years of a unique publishing house.

Unidad Editorial was founded in 2001, on the same month as 9/11, at the cusp of a propitious era for non-fiction. Now it celebrates its 15th anniversary.

The Pillars of the Earth, The Lord of the Rings, Angela’s Ashes; the complete and abundant catch of  Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Isabel Allende, and Paulo Coelho, J.K. Rowling’s first books. The Doctor, Memoirs of a Geisha, Hannibal, The Cave by Saramago; Bridget Jones’ Diary, The Feast of the Goat…  Anyone can look up the best-selling books of 2001, and if he or she is old enough, remember… How many of those books did I read then? “The tendency towards consolidation among publishers had already begun in 2001.

Nothing was yet set in stone but we all clearly saw where the future lay. So the step that I took went against all the logic of the moment.” In 2001, Ymelda Navajo, then an editor at Grupo Planeta, approached Unidad Editorial (the firm which publishes El Mundo, and was still called Unedisa then) with a proposal for combining talents and experience, for creating a new publishing brand, and for proceeding with a new and different way of producing books. Thus was born La Esfera de los Libros, the literary imprint of Unidad Editorial, which is celebrating its 15th year of operation this September.

Read more here El Mundo

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