At the beginning of the 17th century, when Cervantes wrote two parts of his ‘Don Quixote’, the first published in 1605 and the second ten years later, he perhaps had more or less well-founded doubts that the work would be well received. have. What is unimaginable is that his ingenious gentleman will eventually become a very important character in universal literature… and in a lucrative publishing business with thousands of editions, hundreds of millions of copies, dozens of translations and adaptations of all kinds, for everyone. Some of them come with such strange approaches that they leave the following question in mind in mid-2024:

Is the publishing industry running out of ideas to continue innovating and exploiting works beyond simply copying old editions?

A business… and an institution. A few years ago, CSIC decided to investigate how many Spaniards had read ‘Don Quixote de la Mancha’ from the first line to the last. The results were intriguing, if not surprising: only 21.6% claimed to have read the entire novel. Mostly due to studies. The percentage may appear better or worse, but this does not affect a fact for which there is a resounding consensus among scholars today: ‘Don Quixote’ is undoubtedly the greatest work of Spanish literature. And it’s part of the universal canon. Its author, Cervantes, is often mentioned in the list of great writers, along with Shakespeare and Dante.

Cervantes’s masterful hidalgo has become so popular, so successful, that it often sneaks into the ranks of history’s best-selling fiction books. Made both in Spain and abroad. when it comes best sellers There is generally only one work that surpasses Cervantes’s Don Quixote: the Christian Bible, which is even recognized by the Guinness World Records as the most influential published work of all time. It is estimated that it added 5,000 to 7,000 million copies over a period of 1,500 years.

What do the numbers say? This ‘Don Quixote de la Mancha’ is a big deal. And this is not just because rare copies of the novel are occasionally auctioned for stratospheric amounts, or because the characters and Cervantes himself have become a (controversial) cultural and tourist attraction. Don Quixote was, and still is, an interesting publishing business. Here’s some information to give you an idea: Four centuries after its publication, Cervantes’ work is required reading by thousands of students in Spain. All school years. It may not show up on new arrivals or “big sale” shelves, but it’s hard to find a bookstore or library in Spain that doesn’t have at least a few copies.

Emphasizing that Cervantes’ novel is the second most printed work in history after the Bible, the Ministry of Culture admits that it is difficult to state exactly how many copies and translations were distributed precisely because of this overwhelming success. This does not prevent it from providing some data that give an idea of ​​its wide scope: the National Library catalog alone contains 2,598 modern editions after 1831 and thirty editions before 1830. This does not count manuscripts, plans, drawings. and engravings.

Its universal success remains paradoxical because the novel, although it gained popularity very quickly, especially its first part, brought Cervantes a small part of the huge work he would eventually create. And we are not talking about the accumulation of centuries. We know that the author earned only 10% of the profits from the first editions of his 1605 novel.

Millionaire and multilingual. Although it is difficult to determine reliable figures from a marketing perspective, as Cultura acknowledges, Don Quixote is generally estimated to have sold around 500 million copies. After all, Cervantes’ works are not only distributed in Spanish. Thomas Shelton’s English translation was published shortly after the first part was published. And in 1614 there was another one in French of the first part. Since then, the work has been translated into dozens of languages, including German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Korean, among a long list of languages ​​that includes Basque, Catalan, Galician, and Asturian.

Distribution of versions. Since its early years, ‘Don Quixote’ has been the subject of numerous reprints, including those printed in Lisbon and Valencia in 1605, or in Brussels in 1607 and 1611. In recent centuries, hundreds of works by Cervantes have accumulated, some of which are of particular importance. Experts such as Clemencín y Navarrete in 1819. The publishing industry has not stopped releasing editions, adaptations, translations, illustrated collections, memoirs… Academies in 2005, coinciding with the fourth centenary of the launch of the first part. Some of the language offered a “popular edition”, which Alfaguara republished in a limited edition ten years later.

One study, many approaches. ‘Don Quixote’ jumped to the big screen, inspiring TV series, children’s adaptations, games, comics, works of all kinds… and works, versions and different adaptations that continue to innovate the publishing market today, but leave one question open: Cervantes Are you running out of new ideas to continue making ‘s masterpiece profitable?

In recent years, studies involving QR codes have been published to enrich the novel with audiovisual resources or adaptations that attempt to translate Cervantes’ text into current Spanish. This is, for example, the approach ‘Transposing Don Quixote of La Mancha into current Spanish’ by Andrés García Trapiello, a writer and editor who has devoted nearly a decade and a half to transmitting the works of the 16th century. To the use of language in XXI. As a novelty, it is even possible to purchase a joint edition of the original work and the adaptation.

Update or crisis of ideas? Trapiello’s attempt leaves several questions on the table: Is such an adaptation necessary for a work that is more than four centuries old but still understandable to a 21st-century reader? Could it be interpreted as an effort to provide editorial coverage of Cervantes’ work? So, in this case, what do the approaches and ideas of the sector tell us? Trapiello himself talked about this in an interview with Mercurio and touched on the exact work carried out by the CSIC.

“70% of those who claim to have read the book cannot say the name of Don Quixote, Alonso Quijano. More than 40% of those who claim to have read the book think they have approximately understood it. Because 70% of those who are tired of skipping footnotes that often interrupt reading say that it is difficult to read.” or states that it is very difficult.

“It’s like children who do poorly in school and whose delays are attributed to distractions, problems at home, lack of interest… —concludes the writer and editor— Then it turns out that they are shortsighted, cannot see the blackboard, and when their vision improves and they put on glasses, everything is solved. My “Translation is that glasses for the reader, the tool that allows not only to see something but also to recognize it.”

Image | William Murphy (Flickr)

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