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EL PASO, Texas -- When Lee and Bobby Byrd
decided to see if they could make a living on their own and
started Cinco
Puntos Press out of their home in El Paso 20 years ago,
they didn't necessarily intend to become nationally known as
publishers of a steady stream of bilingual children's books.
They just did it.
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| 'When we started we
assumed we were doing a literary press, because that's
who we were,' Bobby said, as they settled in for an interview
at the big table in their showroom/headquarters on Texas Avenue. |
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'We were sick of working
for other people,' Lee said. 'We wanted time for ourselves to
write ˆ which is not really how it happened.' Bobby Byrd
is a poet and essayist, and Lee Merrill Byrd writes fiction.
When they started Cinco Puntos, both were working at Fort Bliss
as technical writers. 'We didn't think of ourselves as
anyone we would publish,' Lee said. Looking around for a suitable
book to start their publishing house, they met storyteller Joe
Hayes who told them about 'La Llorona.' They published it as
a bilingual book, also known as 'The Weeping Woman.' More than
90,000 copies later, when they toss off their standard line
about Cinco Puntos as the house that La Llorona built, they
mean it.
BILINGUAL EDUCATION
Bilingual books were not as common 20 years ago as they are
today, so publishing 'La Llorona' in a bilingual edition by
Hayes was something of a statement. 'Since then, bilingual books
have become accepted,' Lee said. 'Our bread and butter became
children's bilingual books.' They describe the company as 'publishing
great books from the U.S./Mexico border, the American Southwest,
and Mexico.'
'Having an author like Joe pushed us into the children's arena,'
Lee said. 'We just began to acquire more and more kids' books
... and we began to be more and more accurate about picking
them.'
The emphasis on bilingual books and books about the border grew
out of their location, of course. It also was a natural result
of the issues that were of concern to them and the people who
were their friends. 'We began to see that what we were doing
was reflecting Hispanic culture,' Lee said. 'The great books
more and more are those that reflect this world.'
In the same way, they started looking for young-adult books
with Hispanic themes after hearing from libraries and schools
that there weren't enough titles on the market for teen-agers.
They now publish books by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, a writer
on the faculty at the University of Texas at El Paso, as well
as several other authors.
'We don't publish anything we don't like,' Lee said. Publishing
each new book 'is kind of like having a baby, is what I tell
people.'
'The difference is you're immediately pregnant again,' Bobby
said.
Bobby clicked off a quick rundown of where Cinco Puntos' books
are sold ˆ 30-40 percent to the trade (bookstores and other
retail outlets), 60 percent to schools and libraries. They ship
60 percent of the books themselves, while 40 percent go through
their national distributor. The retail space brings in about
$1,000 a month (at full price and from a small table in the
back of the showroom featuring close-outs and specials for $5
a pop), and they sell enough books through their Web site to
keep it self-sustainable. They also work with local school districts
to stage student workshops that give children a hands-on feeling
for books and get them to think of themselves as publishers.
Each student leaves the workshop with a book.
'We really try to encourage kids to be interested in literature,'
Lee said Bobby said the workshops, which bring in $20 per student,
developed after the economic downturn of 9/11 put Cinco Puntos
in precarious shape. They realized that a very small percentage
of their business came from El Paso, and the workshops evolved
as one way to change that.
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| 'Cinco Puntos has become sort of
a staple of El Paso,' he said. 'People are proud of it. We get
a lot of publicity, locally.'
'There's probably a huge amount more we could do,' Lee said,
but she admits that being social is not one of their strengths.
'We've spent so much time in the last 20 years building the
business.'
Even with the early success of 'La Llorona,' the business and
their own writing careers weren't their only jobs. Lee worked
for eight years at El Paso Natural Gas, where she edited the
company magazine, before headquarters moved to Houston.
In 1996, she received a Dobie Paisano writing fellowship and
realized that they had grown enough to be able to make it on
their own. In 2005, they both were honored with Cultural Freedom
Fellowships from the Santa
Fe-based Lannan Foundation, which works to honor and promote
cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity.
In addition to the titles for children and young adults, Cinco
Puntos has built an eclectic catalogue of poetry, fiction, and
non-fiction that features their key themes of the border and
Hispanic culture. They have published two well-received anthologies
of essays about the border, 'The Late Great Mexican Border,'
and 'Puro Border: Dispatches, Snapshots and Graffiti from La
Frontera' that grew, according to their description, from their
'frustration with the national media's myopic reporting of the
border.'
There are seasons, though, when they don't publish any new adult
books at all.
'Doing children's books is really an intellectually stimulating
thing,' Bobby said.
For the first 15 years, they worked out of their home ˆ
two homes, actually, to hold the whole family and the business
ˆ in the Five Points neighborhood that gave the publishing
house its name. They moved to Texas Avenue six years ago, and,
always alert to the need for revenue, they rent out the second
floor of the new building.
The comfortable but not overly fussy or fancy showroom suits
the character of Lee and Bobby, who describes themselves as
'a couple of old hipsters.' 'Bobby's always saying that publishing
has taken us on a journey of self discovery,' Lee said. 'We've
been able to support ourselves. We were only intending to make
a living.'
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AUTHOR
Border
Crossings is a series of features prepared by Soll Sussman
who reported on Mexico and Central America as a correspondent
and regional news editor for The
Associated Press. He left for a stint as A.P. bureau chief
in Toronto. Because his heart never really left Mexico City,
he quickly came to his senses and moved closer to the Mexican
border. He now is a freelance writer happily living in Austin,
Texas.
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SEMINARS
Learning never ends. See if one of our workshops is right for you. |
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