This year, the Santiago International Book Fair (FILSA), just like last year, takes place entirely virtually through the site https://www.prolibro.cl/. This, in line with other book fairs that have opted for hybrid formats, such as the FAS or the FIL itself in Guadalajara.
For those who do not have constant familiarity with the digital world, it is best to go to the top of the site. There are two elements that must be borne in mind when it comes to navigability. One, on the right side, the user record. With an e-mail account and a password, we can have access to the shopping cart. Two, on the left side, a search bar.
When placing by title, author or publisher, the result shows what is available on the site and the possibility of adding it to the shopping cart. Which makes the process fast. We emphasize that the site is responsive, that is, it adapts well to any device, be it a computer, a cell phone or a tablet.
But that is if you are clear about what you are going to look for. If that is not the case, the option is the “News and offers” tab, where there are different book options, randomly. There, the novelties in children’s and young people’s literature stand out above all. Also titles like The Black Palm; Return from the Vanishing Point (Ceibo Editions), Links, by Teresa Calderón (Port of escape), or 200 Chilean rock records (Eight Books Publishers).
It can also be visited by categories. Depending on the interest of the visitor, you can find -among others- the options of Art, Architecture and urbanism, Science fiction, Social Sciences, Film and music, Photography, Great classics, Children and youth, Latin American, and Poetry.
In the Great Classics category, we can find books by HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Andrés Bello, León Tolstoi, Mary Shelley, Marcel Proust, Lewis Carroll, Fiodor Dostoevski, Jane Austen, Federico García Lorca.
Another option is to continue browsing down where we find the logos of the different participating publishers. By clicking on any one a minisite is displayed where it is shown what is available of each one. The bad thing is that when you go back to the beginning, a different order is displayed than the one you came from, so the navigation becomes messy. In that case, it is best to open each editorial in a new tab in the browser.
As a sample, we can point to LOM for example. There we find books by Óscar Hahn, Elicura Chihuailaf, Gabriel Salazar, Galo Ghigliotto, Joan Jara, Diamela Eltit, Ramón Díaz Eterovic. In RIL you can find the duo Claudia Montecinos and Javiera Calderón, or Emiliano Aguayo. In Editorial Cuarto Propio we find Ronald Kay, Andrea Jeftanovic, Carla Peñaloza, Viriginia Woolf, Raquel Olea.
On the other hand, Editorial Universitaria has books by Emiliano Valenzuela, Julieta Kirkwood, Gonzalo Rojas, Sergio Villalobos, Bernardo Subercaseaux, Luz María Méndez, or the journal of the trip to the United States by José Miguel Carrera. In Editorial Forja you can find books about football, such as the biography of Raimundo Tupper, about the 1994 U champion, the Blue Ballet or the superclassics.
In Ocho Libros Editores you can find the History of tennis in Chile, or Aguaturbia, portraits of a life of light, scored by Ignacio Orrego. Meanwhile, in Editorial USACH there are books by María José Ferrada, Hernán Miranda and Gabriel Salazar.
Also a good option is to review the minisites of the distributors, their role is not known to the general public, but they are an important part of the book chain leading from publishers to bookstores. In the case of La Komuna, they have books by Juan Rivano, Hernán Miranda, Carmen Berenguer, Diamela Eltit, Carlos Tromben.
Another distributor is Fernández de Castro, which brings to Chile Spanish publishers (such as Acantilado, Alpha Decay, Siruela or Visor) and Argentine publishers (Adriana Hidalgo or Monte Hermoso Ediciones), here we find volumes by Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Italo Calvino, Jorge Edwards , Edgardo Cozarinsky, Mario Benedetti, Charles Bukowski, Clarice Lispector, Hebe Uhart, Gioconda Belli, or the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, Louise Glück.
Another aspect is the activities of cultural programming. To access it, the site has a tab displayed in the upper menu, from there you can access another sister site: https://actividades.prolibro.cl/. There is access to the YouTube channel where the activities of the fair are broadcast. Then, the details of those to come, such as the Cycle of recent Latin American poets or the Conversatory 200 Chilean rock records.
In this part, the best thing is that you can access the activities that have already been carried out, that are recorded and remain on the site.
We want to give thanks to the author of this write-up for this incredible content
A walk through FILSA: guide to navigate an online fair – La Tercera