Creative industries

Publishing

A literary bastion in the region

Uruguay stands out as the leading country in the habit of reading in the region, backed by the highest production of books per capita in Latin America. Its publishing industry, with a rich literary and journalistic tradition, catapulted several authors to the international scene, who have often been called "the weird ones", a term that embraces their originality and uniqueness.

With a tradition rooted in independent publishing houses, crucial in the emergence of new generations of writers, Uruguay is also home to major international publishing groups, which contribute to the cultural exchange by publishing both local authors and international titles.

In recent years, the Uruguayan market has witnessed a remarkable dynamism, especially in the children's and young adult literature segment, which accounted for 20% of domestic book sales. Illustrators and writers such as Roy Berocay, Cecilia Curbelo, and Alfredo Soderguit have managed to cross borders and achieve bestsellers and multiple translations. 

Uruguayan authors such as Horacio Quiroga, Felisberto Hernández, Juan Carlos Onetti, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Eduardo Galeano, Mario Levrero, and Cristina Peri Rossi, widely translated and internationally recognized, supported the consolidation of Uruguay in the global literary scene. 

Successful publications with international sales

• The books related to the 1972 plane crash of a Uruguayan rugby team, "Milagro en los Andes", "Society of the Snow" and "Tenía que sobrevivir", have sold over 300,000 copies in total and have been translated into more than 12 languages. They are also on The New York Times bestseller list.
• A similar phenomenon is represented by titles about former Uruguayan President José Mujica, "A Black Sheep in Power: Confessions and Intimacies of Pepe Mujica" by Andrés Danza and Ernesto Tulbovitz, and the biography "Mujica" by Miguel Ángel Campodónico, which have sold more than 200,000 copies in Uruguay, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Korea, Japan, Spain and Mexico.
• In children's literature, Roy Berocay sold more than 500,000 copies of "El Sapo Ruperto" and "Pateando Lunas" in Mexico and Argentina, and Cecilia Curbelo sold more than 85,000 copies in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Panama.
• In fiction, in addition to the classic Uruguayan best sellers, Carlos Domínguez, whose novel "La casa de papel" has sold more than 200,000 copies and has been translated into 30 languages, stands out with singular sales success.