Carla Morales: The edition as a driving force

In 2017, together with her husband, Eduardo Lira, she founded Escrito con Tiza, a publishing house dedicated to children's and young people's literature. With so little time left, they have already managed to position themselves with a good name in the Chilean and Latin American publishing market. Morales previously worked at the Norma publishing house, as part of the press team, and later did the same job at Ugbar Editores, where she was also the editorial producer. As a director, in Desatanudos she had great growth in her conception of the publishing world. He has independently collaborated with labels such as Planeta and Santillana, among other publishers.

He has been a jury member of the Roberto Bolaño Prize, awarded by the Book Fund, and the Gabriela Mistral Literary Games, of the Municipality of Santiago de Chile. Her journey in the world of publishing has placed her as one of the contemporary references in the area, which is why today she is invited to participate in various meetings on a continental level. She is one of the guests for the most recent edition of FilBo and will participate in guided tables for professionals in the field of books and publishing.

The editor spoke with Infobae Colombia about her conceptions of the publishing world and her journey in it.

How do you start your journey through the world of publishing? Is the editor made or born with that intuition to know what is good to publish and what is not?

I started studying pedagogy guided to the teaching of Spanish, but the truth is that I never liked pedagogy itself. What interested me was language. I knew what I wanted to do. So, when I got out and finished college, the first jobs I looked for were in the publishing field. That was always my north. Today I couldn't do anything else, I'm always thinking about books, how to make them. It's my engine. I've been doing this since 2006. By then, publishing studies, diplomas and some masters were just being trained in Chile. Editing is not a career in itself, at an academic level, it is more of a specialty.

In this, I learned by doing. In the publishing house where I was for the first few years I learned all the texting of how the industry works. Then I became independent and started working on projects with different publishers and public entities. Little by little, I got closer to the infant boy. By then, I was an editor, somehow, but the field of children's literature was something else and required other skills. I founded the publishing house with my husband in 2017. He is in charge of the entire administrative part and I take care of what has to do with the creation of the content and its editing.

Was it easy to start with your own project?

It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that hard either. The advantage is that I wasn't a novice at this. I already had the contacts, I knew how to move, what to do. He understood the importance of the press, of communications, of network management. The publishing industry is not simple, it becomes an odyssey, especially from the economic point of view. We were already on the circuit, so, somehow, we already had land won. And it is that there are so many factors that influence both the process of making a book as after it comes out. We already knew how it worked. The difficult thing, at the time, had to do with resources, because what had to be done we already had more than internalized. We've come a long way in five years.

Did the arrival of the pandemic bring obstacles for the publisher?

Well, the paper crisis has had us all on the brink. We had to adapt to a way of consumption, too. People, not being able to visit bookstores, began to buy a lot online. The sale of children's books, at least in Chile, had high records. Parents needed to buy books so that children would be distracted and they too could abstract themselves from being parents and workers 24/7 and in the same space.

Is there support today from the Chilean government for the proper distribution of the book?

There is almost absolute support. The distribution depends on each person, but the facilities are there. It's not difficult to reach bookstores and connect with online sales. It is possible to access the library network and connect with different spaces that are not necessarily part of the book ecosystem, but are part of the readers. School purchases are important for a publisher like ours. They no longer buy under the same conditions as before, but they are there and the scope they have is indisputable.

Has there been an evolution of content in literature guided to children in the last 20 years, the way in which it is communicated?

Of course there's been a change. The postmodern text, to call it in some way, has gone from being a closed text, which allowed no room for doubt and did not invite questions, to being much more open, with more space for interpretation. They're open books. The album book is the great exponent of that, with very few words and an impressive visual story, it allows readers, children, to finish building the text.

A good book is one that leaves you more questions than answers, it's already said. The one that makes you jump into other books. The evolution of content, then, has been radical. We are in another era.

In your opinion, what is the course that children's literature is taking today in Latin America?

I don't know if I've thought much about it. I think that from what I do, which has to do with the informative texts, work is being done on caring for others and the environment. More and more humanistic concepts are being embraced, and readers are beginning to become familiar with these topics from an early age. Ever since they were younger. The idea is to cultivate critical knowledge in readers. For me, the great niche that informative books have, because it is in that field where I can speak properly, is becoming detached from the misconception that the good reader is the one who reads certain fiction books. There is a very interesting bet to cover the interests of that niche, which although they are good readers, they are not willing to consume all kinds of texts. It is precisely about ensuring that the informative text is a key to entry into literature. It uses many literary resources to make itself. There is the metaphor, the comparison, the simile, the paraphrase. They are used to captivate readers, but by communicating to them something that is concrete, informative, that corresponds to some specific area of the sciences or the arts. That is a path that must be followed. The important thing, in that sense, is to take care of what is required, to attend to the strictly contemporary, a crisis like that of the pandemic, for example, but without becoming fatalistic or extremely realistic. Everything must be in the right measure. We could publish an ecological book, but if I start saying that the world is going to end, then I'm not going to invite anyone to read. The focus should be on the assessment we should make of our nature. The child must come into contact with these values by himself, guided by reading.

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