The 2025 Publishers’ Fair (FED) announced its line-up of activities, guests and participants, including more than 330 publishing houses from Latin America and Spain. 

Since its creation in 2013, the continuously-expanding Publishers’ Fair has fostered exchange between readers and book publishers, offering book debates, presentations and other activities. Last year, the FED welcomed 24,600 visitors throughout the weekend. 

One of the main events in Buenos Aires literary calendar, the fair will open against the backdrop of a serious drop in book sales, according to the latest annual survey by the Argentine Book Chamber. Publishers in particular were hit the hardest, with 80% of them reporting lower sales numbers throughout 2024. In the report, the publishing scene is said to be “drifting between uncertainty and acceptance, searching for new paths in complex times”.

“The 2024 FED was the first one to report lower sales figures than its predecessors despite an increase in the audience,” FED organizer Victor Malumian told the Herald. “While the economic context is well known, we nevertheless believe sales will improve significantly,” he added, mentioning the fact that the retail price of books from small publishers did not rise along with year-on-year inflation.  

More than 330 publishing houses from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay and Spain will offer books from their catalogs and new releases of literature, essay, poetry, arts, social sciences, graphic novels and children’s books, among others. 

This year’s fair will feature 13 public conversations with local and foreign literary personalities, on subjects like writing literature despite hurt, video games, feminism in the age of the ultra-right, and music as a creative force in Latin American storytelling, among others. 

The international guest list includes Lithuanian-British author Marijam Didžgalvytė; Mexican writer Socorro Venegas and Brazilian poet and singer-songwriter Tatiana Nascimento.  Renowned local authors will also participate in the activities, such as Eartheater author Dolores Reyes and María Sonia Cristoff, Pablo Semán, Verónica Gago, Edgardo Scott, Juan Mattio, and Paula Puebla among others. 

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Since 2021, the fair has hosted the Bookselling Prize to acknowledge the work of bookstores throughout Argentina, from a comprehensive perspective that includes their efforts advocating culture and community work. The finalists this year are Libro de Oro (Tucumán), Magia (Buenos Aires City), and Los Confines, Fervor and Citybell (Buenos Aires province). The prize will be announced on August 7. 

That same day, FED will also announce the winner of their FED & Thomson Reuters Award ‘A Way to Guadalajara’. The winning publisher will get to travel and participate in the Guadalajara International Film Festival, one of the top literary events in the Spanish-speaking universe. 

The event will run from August 7-10 with free admission at the C Complejo Art Media center, in Buenos Aires, from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.

A blood-donation stand will be set up at the Fair on August 8, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., as part of a campaign co-organized by the Buenos Aires Blood Center and Céspedes Libros. Donors must register beforehand at https://turnos.donarg.com.ar/sangre/fed8.agosto.25