Companies support and information to publishers
The general services offered by the Federación have positive effects in the collective of the publishers and in the book sector in general.
The National Publisher's Meetings, the International Book Fair LIBER, the Meeting on Publishing at Universidad Menéndez y Pelayo, or the presence in international fairs fulfil, in addition to their specific function, have the objective of establishing a forum for debate and for contact with publishers.
The publication of the Guía de Editores and the books catalogue by subjects, the annual study on domestic trade, the catalogue of rights, the catalogue of LIBER exhibitors, a brochure for each international book fair in which the Federación participates (including information on all Spanish participants either within the Federación stand or with their own stand) and other catalogues for publishing promotion are intended to offer the appropriate services to the publishers and to provide an in-depth knowledge of the publishing sector.
A main objective of the Federación is to provide information to the publishers in order to help them. Information on subsidies, awards or on tax, labour and managerial policies applied to the sector are some of the issues that form the Federación's informative policy. Likewise, the Federación's Web site, regularly up-dated, offers part of this information. The Federación also publishes an informative review that gathers all the important news of the sector.
The Federación has been working since 2001 in the development of the project "Servicio de Información de la Oficina del Libro Español" (Information Service of the Spanish Book Office), which consists in elaborating launching a data base of the books for sale. This database will offer a service of professional information to book agents, publishers, distributors and booksellers, although it will contain an open access part with information of general interest. The project's essential part will be the development of a tool accessible through Internet that will provide bibliographic and commercial information and will adapt to the standards used internationally. In the future, the design will permit the configuration of different users profiles according to the access type, mainly professionals of the sector.
Among the services offered by the Federación, it is important to emphasise the support provided to unions and federated associations to inform the Spanish publishers about the legislative modifications and innovations of interest for books publishers; in particular, those in the educational, cultural, technological, economical, financial, fiscal and labour policies of the public administration, at a national, European and international level. Special attention will be given to intellectual property, author's rights and tax rights, by creating reports on the legislation governing these questions and by trying to obtain the most appropriate regulations for the book sector. Regulations of digital publications and electronic commerce, taxation applied to books, fixed price, free commerce, impact of piracy and illegal reprography, libraries situation or community legislation are some of the subjects with which the Federación deals. The final objective of the Federación is to obtain, with the help of legal and tax experts, a legislation that reflects, on the one hand, the double nature of the book as cultural item and economic item and, on the other hand, the importance of its position within the so-called cultural industries.
In this sense, the Federación also seeks expert advice in all matters concerning book commercialisation in domestic trade, and in year 2003 has also worked on the elaboration of a regulation project related with this subject to present to the Public Administration. The Federación constantly works on conflictive subjects and on those related to community regulations: digital publishing, electronic publishing and library loan.
The companies related to the book sector, and especially the Spanish book publishers members of the Federación, benefit from the results of the studies and reports carried out by the Federación.
The Federación also undertakes actions regarding these issues for the benefit of the publishers such as:
- Signature of a collaboration agreement with Iberia to obtain discounts on the cost of the flight tickets the Federación covers (staff going to the Fairs, trip of authors promoted by the Federación, etc.).
- Correos y Telégrafos (Spanish Post) with the collaboration of this Federación, started in 2002 a service called Post Libris, promoted by the Federación Española de Cámaras del Libro. This service allows publishers to send books with a weight superior to 2 kilos, as blue packages or mail packages, without formalising any contract and with a 25% discount from the regular price. To use this service, the publishers interested requested an exclusive card.
- In February 2001, the Federación signed an agreement with NH Hoteles by which all member publishers may benefit from corporate and preferential rates offered by this chain. This agreement is still in force and, apparently, it has a very positive answer among member publishers, which receive regularly the up-dated prices.
Guía de Editores de España - Spanish publishers Guide
This is a thorough list of all the companies that have the publishing activity as main activity.
The Guide includes the corporate name of every company, logo, responsible persons in the company, mailing address, telephone number, fax number, email and Web site, publishing lines of every publisher, languages in which the company publishes and useful information and addresses for the publishers.
To buy the Guía de Editores de España (the 2002-2003 edition), please contact the distributor Itaca (telephone number: 902.253.540).
Catalogues and Directories
The Federación publishes a catalogue with all books from member publishers whose rights are for sale in languages other than Spanish.
In the past few years the Federación published different directories of the Spanish publishing houses with information on the companies, a brief summary on the type of books they publish, and distribution companies in Spain and abroad.
Existing directories of publishers:
- Publishers of child and youth's book (finished)
- Publishers of art's book
- Publishers of religious books
- Publishers of narrative, poetry and theatre books
Publishers, bookstores and book distributors can request copies to the Federación: secretaria@fge.es
Documentary database
The Federación has a documentary data base at the disposal of member associations and is composed of 2,000 books and documents classified in eight major sections:
- Statistics
- Book policy:
- National regulation and regulation from other countries
- Laws on book
- Tax policies
- Book fixed price- The book's domestic and foreign trade
- Book and reading promotion
- In Spain
- In the European Union
- In other countries
- History of book and publishing
- Statistics on reading habits- New technologies
- Electronic commerce
- Book trade on the Internet
- Electronic publishing
- Multimedia publishing
-Intellectual property
- Legislation
- Publisher's right
- Reprography
- Publishing contracts-National and International Congress
- Reports and conferences
-Spanish Language
Sistema de Información Normalizada para el Libro (SINLI) (Standardised Information System for the Book)
The Federación de Gremios de Editores de España collaborates continuously with booksellers and distributors representatives on launching a system for sending standardised documents for the books sector through computer systems.
The Spanish book sector has joined forces to modernise itsr management system and to develop an homogeneous method of exchange of information and documents with the objective of saving time and money costs. The Federación de Gremios de Editores de España (FGEE), the Confederación Española de Gremios y Asociaciones de Libreros (CEGAL) and the Federación de Asociaciones Nacionales de Distribuidores de Ediciones (FANDE) have como together to develop the system SINLI (Sistema de Información Normalizada para el Libro). This system is free for the companies and professionals of the sector and is intended for publishers, distributors and booksellers, who exchange in Spain hundreds of million of documents every year.
SINLI began its operation on January, 23rd and already includes more than 270 companies (publishers, distributors, booksellers and companies of software development) that have chosen this system for exchanging documents. This system will be specially useful for small booksellers, distributors and publishers - around 4,000 of them throughout Spain - that waste a lot of time with bureaucratic and administrative paperwork as a result of the variety of their documentation.
SINLI was born with a universal vocation, since there are no geographical limitations. First of all, the system is perfectly compatible with the exportation of books to Latin America, where the local companies and branches of the Spanish companies sell Spanish books. But SINLI can also be useful for all those who deal with the trade of Spanish books anywhere in the world.
Software development companies normally working for the book industry in Spain have already included in their programs the necessary elements to make compatible their business management systems with the SINLI. In any case, a free tool called FANDITE is available for all the companies and can be downloaded in the web site of FANDE. This tool can be used for receiving and sending documents under the standard of SINLI.
The requirements to be able to send and receive documentation through SINLI are basic: a computer with a Pentium processor and Internet connection with a modem. An ADSL connection is not required, nor are complicated programs or complementary software.
Grupo de Editoriales Jurídicas (Group of Legal Publishers)
The Grupo de Editoriales Jurídicas of the F.G.E.E. works to improve free and fair competition in the agreements with the Consejo General del Poder Judicial in providing sentences to the judges, district attorneys and secretaries.