You won’t find an independent bookshop around every corner in Chișinău. Even more, you won’t find a little independent publishing house, and when one appears, it’s a phenomenon!
When Cartego bookstore opened its doors in the city center, I marched there to find out for myself what was going on, ending up meeting Natalia Blanari — the owner. The excitement came a couple of months ago, as she accepted my invitation to chat more about Cartego, an independent publishing house and a bookshop with a unique book selection.
Veronica Zubcu in conversation with Natalia Blanari:
As a reader, I catch myself dreaming of the idea of opening a bookshop one day, but you took this dream and turned it into reality. Where did you find your motivation to start your own bookstore in this competitive environment: there are big local bookshop chains, ads that persuade readers to buy cheap books online, and quite frankly, the fight for the local market of readers is huge!
I was motivated by the fact that I simply couldn’t find the books I wanted to read in local bookshops. I don’t like to order books online. When you are online, there is a feeling to buy lots of books (which one often does) and in the end, you don’t need all of them or won’t read half of them at all. The local search for Romanian writers or small publishing houses, gave little results. Then I told myself: “Let’s try and do this, maybe there are readers like me who are looking for something different!”.
I saw you handpicked book collections from Cartier, Polirom, Baroque Books, Seneca — how do you talk your customers into buying these peculiar books?
I have a good team of librarians who are knowledgeable about the books that we sell here. Thanks to them, when people come to Cartego, they receive the necessary help and guidance in finding the right book.
Everytime I visit Cartego, I keep thinking of how much attention you offer to children’s books. All of them are so beautifully crafted that I want to buy them all! Why did you put so much effort into bringing children’s books in your store, especially that your books are so different from what the local publishers have to offer?
When I was thinking of our publishing house, I knew I wanted to make children’s books because I believe the love for books must be developed from an early age. And in this case, the children’s books have to be exciting and visually attractive because nowadays a child’s attention is distracted by Youtube, Tik-Tok and other things and it’s quite hard to give it something that will be better than the internet. Our book market is full of old titles, some of them are not interesting enough or not beautifully illustrated. I don’t want to make them look bad, but we live in 2021! On the international market, children’s books look very different.
When you go to French, Belgian or German book fairs, you see that, for example, in France, children’s books will have one type of storytelling and illustration, rather than in Estonia. There, children like different things than the French ones, and their books will differ. The books that we make now should take into account trends and innovations in kids’ psychology.
For example, we have a book called “Duck, Death and the Tulip” (Утка, смерть и тюльпан) and I like to see parents’ faces and reactions when they open it, wondering who would be ready to buy this book and engage in conversation with their child.
Duck, Death and the Tulip is a 2007 children’s book by German author and illustrator Wolf Erlbruch. The story involves a duck who acquaints a character called Death who, as it turns out, has been following her all her life. The two become friends, discussing life, death, and what any afterlife might be like.
Source: wikipedia.org
In 2020, Cartego published two books: “Colours” by Aino-Maija Metsola and “My Mastodon” by Barbra Lowell and Antonio Marioni, both for children.
Natalia, could you tell me more about the process of book publishing? As far as I know, you didn’t do the printing for “Colours” and “My Mastodon” in Moldova, which is curious.
You are right. As I said before, I went to many international book fairs and there I understood that, because I don’t have experience in the publishing industry, it will be hard for me to make a book from scratch. So I decided to buy the copyrights to one of the books and translate it to Romanian. There were several publishers I wanted to work with but I finally chose an American publisher and their latest book “My Mastodon”. I liked the story: a girl is living in a museum and her best friend is a Mastodon. It has a good educational part, where the girl doesn’t want her friend to be displayed in other museums but after all, she understands that he must go. She learns to share. And at last, I chose this book for its amazing illustrations.
Because the illustrations in this book are so important and they had to be printed in a very good quality, I went to a Japanese printing house where Americans and Italians and many other publishers printed their books.
Talking about big international printing houses, they prefer to take orders that are in high volume, being cheaper for the client and for the printing house. That being the case, what is the number of copies you produced for the “Colours” and “My Mastodon”?
Both “Colours” and “My Mastodon” were printed in 2000 copies. This is the minimum accepted circulation for such printing houses…
It’s a pretty big number for Moldova and not only. Usually our market works with 300–500 copies. Even Russia, a really big market, works with maximum 2000–3000 copies for new titles.
Yes but gladly, we are the only ones who have the copyright for these books and it’s just us who sell them in Moldova and we are planning to bring them to Romanian market.
What publishing plans does Cartego have for 2021?
Well, of course we want to print more books. Last year we issued 2 books, so this year we wanted to publish 3–4 titles but, due to the pandemic, it would be quite complicated to keep our initial rhythm, therefore we would be glad to manage and publish 2 more titles this year.
I think that opening a publishing house in Moldova is an ambitious, risky, but somehow a brave move. I was wondering if, let’s say, you had all the possible resources available to you, what would you like to provide for Cartego?
Whenever I talk to my friends and we take this ideal case where I get to choose my job and what to do in life, having unlimited resources, I end up saying that I would still choose to invest my time and money in a publishing house. However in this case, I would be publishing way more books!
When you have limitless finances, you don’t think of when a book will be sold or who would like to purchase it. Knowing we have limited resources, we depend on what our customers want to read and in this case, it takes more time for the change to happen.
Would you be interested in working on a book with some of our local illustrators or artists?
I would like to, but my problem with the local artists is that they are tied to the roots and they keep coming back to Guguță and to traditionalism. I really like our traditions and our history, but come on, it is 2021 outside, so I’m waiting for the future to happen already because I am more excited about it rather than the past. This results in a situation where you have a new text, but the illustrations usually have some mioritic (folkish) elements to them. Nonetheless I know that our folks are quite nostalgic and they buy books with these kinds of illustrations, so here comes the moment of compromise that you need to make as an editor — the moment that I find to be one of the hardest for the editor that wants to choose the right books to edit.
You know, maybe you need to have that feeling to discover the next bestseller and to be the first one to buy it.
You have this feeling every time you read a book and you love it. This phenomenon is really curious: how does a book become a bestseller? Some books become bestsellers even before they are written only because of who their writers are. Let’s take Olga Tokarczuk and how she became a bestselling author, even though I know that in Moldova many people don’t like her books.
Olga Tokarczuk is a Polish writer who in 2019 was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. After this, she became known in Moldova. Her books started to sell, especially “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” which ironically, in Europe is not a very popular book because it is not a typical Tokarczuk book.
Can you mention some titles from your bookshop that you love because of their content: the graphics or the storytelling?
I really like the book “Colours” edited by Cartego and “Fairy-Mother and Rosemary” (Мама-фея и Рoзмари) which has amazing illustrations. These two are from the children’s books that we have in our bookstore.
As for the books meant for adults, from what I have at Cartego, I like to read something from Baroque Books. Their books have humour and are relaxing, perfect for leisure time. For instance, instead of watching a show or a movie, I read a Baroque book and it gives me this state of wellbeing. I also like to read books on philosophy, one of the books that I keep recommending is “Seneca” which is actually from the Seneca publishing house or “Letters to Lucilius” is also a good one. If you are a beginner in reading philosophy you should definitely start with books from Seneca.
Another book that I like a lot, is “The Prince” by Niccolò Machiavelli.
And the last one I will recommend is also from Baroque Books — “How not to write a novel” by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelwark. It has many curious facts and it tells the readers things they don’t know about this industry. For instance: the criteria an editor has when choosing a manuscript.
The number one ingredient that an editor has to have is the love for books.
I hope that by the end of this reading you feel as inspired as I do. The books that Natalia mentioned are truly amazing and, thanks to her, now I know what to buy for my friends’ kids and even for myself.
As for the publishing industry, it remains a domain that is not fully explored in Moldova. There is a lot to be done here and we will continue to discover it in future stories.
P.S. support our local publishers by buying books from them, cheers!
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