WEBVTT 00:00:00.515 --> 00:00:01.595 (Applause) 00:00:01.833 --> 00:00:03.222 A dream made true. 00:00:04.222 --> 00:00:08.198 You'll notice in my voice, as soon as I calm down, 00:00:09.229 --> 00:00:13.222 that I have a somehow weird accent, as I've lived in Spain for twelve years. 00:00:18.222 --> 00:00:25.198 Twelve years ago I went to Paris for 15 days to receive a literary award 00:00:25.222 --> 00:00:30.222 and I met a Catalan girl there, and I stayed to live with her. 00:00:32.387 --> 00:00:39.222 Back in Argentina I had a job, a house, and no intentions of moving whatsoever. 00:00:40.650 --> 00:00:46.198 While in Spain I had nothing: no house, no job, not even papers 00:00:46.222 --> 00:00:48.222 to get a house and a job. 00:00:49.222 --> 00:00:56.198 Even worse, after living 8-9 months in Spain 00:00:56.222 --> 00:00:59.222 only because I was in love, 00:01:00.428 --> 00:01:04.221 two horrible things happened in Argentina. First came the 2001 crisis, 00:01:04.825 --> 00:01:08.198 4-5 presidents in one week and social chaos. 00:01:08.222 --> 00:01:13.222 And, even worse, around the same time, Racing won the soccer championship. 00:01:14.856 --> 00:01:21.198 I am a Racing fan. It's horrible seeing your team champion for the first time 00:01:21.222 --> 00:01:23.198 while being away... 00:01:23.222 --> 00:01:27.198 Far away from your land, but in my case, from my father, 00:01:27.222 --> 00:01:29.198 with whom we'd always thought 00:01:29.222 --> 00:01:31.941 we'd see this event, if it ever happened, together. 00:01:32.222 --> 00:01:35.198 These two circumstances, the economic crisis in Argentina 00:01:35.222 --> 00:01:39.198 and my team winning the title, happened at the same time 00:01:39.222 --> 00:01:43.555 and taught me what I didn't have the slightest idea could ever happen: 00:01:44.222 --> 00:01:48.596 that pain and party, 00:01:48.620 --> 00:01:51.197 tragedy and triumph are the same 00:01:51.222 --> 00:01:52.979 when you're away. 00:01:53.247 --> 00:01:56.910 Not being able to cry with your loved ones when something horrible happens, 00:01:56.935 --> 00:02:00.198 or celebrate with your people when something wonderful happens 00:02:00.222 --> 00:02:04.690 puts you immediately offside. 00:02:05.856 --> 00:02:09.163 As I was in Spain sad and alone, I had the idea to create a blog 00:02:09.189 --> 00:02:12.198 and I started writing. 00:02:12.222 --> 00:02:15.198 I named that blog Orsai, 00:02:15.864 --> 00:02:21.276 that means in soccer jargon in Spanish that you are offside, off the game, 00:02:21.301 --> 00:02:24.222 that you're not allowed to play. 00:02:25.832 --> 00:02:29.291 In those times I used the Internet mainly to send emails 00:02:29.316 --> 00:02:31.896 and to chat with my friends from Mercedes. 00:02:32.435 --> 00:02:35.949 So what happened when I created that blog was a huge surprise for me 00:02:35.973 --> 00:02:38.528 and I imagine it was so for everyone else at the time. 00:02:38.695 --> 00:02:42.973 I started writing short stories, sometimes as myself, 00:02:43.488 --> 00:02:47.940 or disguised as different characters; a housewife, a seer, a princess. 00:02:48.755 --> 00:02:51.012 And little by little it started to get crowded. 00:02:51.162 --> 00:02:56.198 People from weird countries: Honduras, Nicaragua,from Spain or from here. 00:02:56.222 --> 00:03:02.222 And so Orsai turned into a kind of involuntary community of readers. 00:03:03.222 --> 00:03:06.198 I did nothing to gather them, I mean, 00:03:06.222 --> 00:03:08.198 I didn't put banners in my blog saying: 00:03:08.222 --> 00:03:11.198 "Come in, feel comfortable, generate a community". 00:03:11.448 --> 00:03:14.198 The only thing I did was writing short stories, 00:03:14.765 --> 00:03:18.198 I also read the comments the readers made to those tales 00:03:18.222 --> 00:03:22.198 and also, most of the time, I chatted with them. 00:03:23.303 --> 00:03:28.008 When that community got even bigger because of word of mouth, 00:03:28.033 --> 00:03:30.198 and specially became more fervent, 00:03:30.992 --> 00:03:34.595 some traditional companies related to culture and media 00:03:34.620 --> 00:03:37.420 started to listen to this babble of voices. 00:03:37.445 --> 00:03:40.325 "Look, there's a guy who writes and people are there." 00:03:41.016 --> 00:03:43.710 And so my phone started ringing, 00:03:43.734 --> 00:03:46.934 they offered me to work with them. 00:03:47.597 --> 00:03:50.087 The publishing companies proposed me to make books 00:03:50.112 --> 00:03:52.584 with the stories I wrote for free on the Internet 00:03:52.609 --> 00:03:56.100 and the press invited me to write columns in their newspapers, 00:03:56.125 --> 00:03:58.674 similar to the kind of stuff I wrote on the Internet. 00:03:58.841 --> 00:04:03.198 I know this now, I didn't know back then. 00:04:03.682 --> 00:04:07.065 I think I made a rather serious mistake. 00:04:07.605 --> 00:04:09.967 I went to work with the industry, 00:04:09.991 --> 00:04:13.748 I ended the direct communication with my readers 00:04:14.454 --> 00:04:19.197 and I let them put me intermediaries, an agent, a publisher 00:04:19.221 --> 00:04:23.198 a manager, a content editor. 00:04:23.651 --> 00:04:28.197 All those people lined up between me and my readers. 00:04:29.979 --> 00:04:36.047 The publishing companies also asked me, for the publication of my first book, 00:04:36.072 --> 00:04:40.198 to take away all those free articles from the Internet so they could sell them. 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:45.198 The situation got a bit tense there because I told them immediately 00:04:45.222 --> 00:04:48.428 I couldn't do such thing for I had given those texts as presents, 00:04:48.453 --> 00:04:51.705 and I couldn't go house by house asking every reader if, please, 00:04:51.730 --> 00:04:54.285 I could get the gift back because now I wanted 00:04:54.310 --> 00:04:56.079 to sell it through white collar guys. 00:04:56.556 --> 00:05:01.579 But it became worse as books and time went by, 00:05:01.604 --> 00:05:05.858 that permanent feeling that the publishers were robbing me. 00:05:07.166 --> 00:05:10.558 One time they closed the sales one of my pocketbooks. 00:05:10.582 --> 00:05:14.198 It's an anecdote I always tell and I think it's descriptive. 00:05:14.600 --> 00:05:20.198 they stated to have sold about 900 copies in Argentina of a pocketbook 00:05:20.876 --> 00:05:24.198 and I knew, because I'm a close friend of a bookseller from Mercedes, 00:05:24.222 --> 00:05:28.673 one of the three bookstores in Mercedes, I knew that 750 had been sold 00:05:28.698 --> 00:05:30.197 in a small bookstore 00:05:31.262 --> 00:05:37.198 of a town of Buenos Aires province. 00:05:39.332 --> 00:05:43.808 And it wasn't just the feeling of being robbed at gunpoint, 00:05:43.832 --> 00:05:47.118 the impossibility of checking sales and printing. 00:05:47.142 --> 00:05:51.198 I also started receiving a lot of emails from readers of the blog 00:05:51.222 --> 00:05:54.198 telling me my books were not available in their countries. 00:05:54.595 --> 00:05:58.578 The industry distributes books in Spanish only where it is profitable: 00:05:58.603 --> 00:06:03.236 Argentina, Spain, Mexico, 00:06:03.261 --> 00:06:06.896 but if a Salvadoran or a Peruvian wants my book, 00:06:07.602 --> 00:06:10.598 they have no choice... They will never get it. 00:06:10.622 --> 00:06:13.702 With the press I was going through something similar. 00:06:14.094 --> 00:06:17.070 They asked me articles 400-words long, 00:06:17.095 --> 00:06:19.197 but if there was half a page of advertising, 00:06:19.222 --> 00:06:23.536 the editor called me to tell me that this week my column was 200-word long. 00:06:24.020 --> 00:06:27.198 When the European economic crisis came and the companies 00:06:27.222 --> 00:06:30.236 stopped advertising in newspapers, 00:06:30.261 --> 00:06:32.847 I thought "Now I'll be able to go back to 400 words". 00:06:32.872 --> 00:06:36.198 But no, they removed a sheet from the newspaper and left me with 150. 00:06:37.213 --> 00:06:41.987 Last year, when these issues started to get worse, 00:06:42.012 --> 00:06:46.198 I got very tired and publicly broke up with the publishing companies 00:06:46.222 --> 00:06:48.564 Mondadori from Italy, Plaza & Janes from Spain, 00:06:48.588 --> 00:06:51.911 Sudamericana from Argentina and Grijalbo from Mexico. 00:06:51.935 --> 00:06:54.005 I also publicly finished with the newspapers 00:06:54.029 --> 00:06:57.011 La Nación from Argentina and El País from Spain. 00:06:57.035 --> 00:07:01.883 In 1400 words in the blog, free, I told them to fuck off. 00:07:02.472 --> 00:07:03.614 (Laughs) 00:07:04.462 --> 00:07:05.720 (Applause) 00:07:13.475 --> 00:07:15.685 As I did this, and after a year of silence, 00:07:15.709 --> 00:07:18.650 I started communicating with the people from my blog 00:07:19.531 --> 00:07:21.724 and I told them I had a new idea. 00:07:22.327 --> 00:07:25.798 An idea that could be really fun and especially risky 00:07:25.822 --> 00:07:28.856 but that had the secret goal of proving, 00:07:28.880 --> 00:07:32.435 also and specially to myself, 00:07:32.697 --> 00:07:36.958 that the famous crisis of the industry is not an economic crisis 00:07:36.983 --> 00:07:40.198 but a moral one, it's a crisis of greed. 00:07:41.543 --> 00:07:43.820 The idea was of making an impossible magazine 00:07:44.295 --> 00:07:47.294 from my backyard, in a town in Catalonia, 00:07:47.318 --> 00:07:50.889 without any offices, and with a staff integrated 00:07:50.913 --> 00:07:53.197 only by my family and childhood friends. 00:07:54.081 --> 00:07:57.198 A magazine that would be called Orsai, just like my blog. 00:07:57.668 --> 00:08:00.250 One night with Chiri, who's my dear friend, 00:08:00.274 --> 00:08:02.607 we wrote a kind of decalogue 00:08:03.233 --> 00:08:07.726 a sort of promise to the readers. This happened exactly one year ago. 00:08:08.313 --> 00:08:12.198 We promised the magazine wouldn't have any advertising, not an inch of it. 00:08:12.518 --> 00:08:14.668 It wouldn't have private or state subsidies. 00:08:14.970 --> 00:08:17.983 We promised it would have the best graphic quality available 00:08:18.007 --> 00:08:20.700 in any of the countries where distributed. 00:08:20.970 --> 00:08:24.158 That it would do without any possible intermediaries. 00:08:24.183 --> 00:08:28.198 That it would have a paper version, and a dynamic version for iPad and iPhone, 00:08:28.222 --> 00:08:33.198 for BlackBerry and, besides, a free PDF ten days later, 00:08:33.868 --> 00:08:37.198 so the magazine can be read regardless of the cost. 00:08:38.477 --> 00:08:41.349 We promised those to write and draw in the magazine 00:08:41.374 --> 00:08:44.398 would be only people me and Chiri admire a lot. 00:08:44.422 --> 00:08:48.198 That it would be quarterly and have more than 200 pages. 00:08:48.222 --> 00:08:53.198 That it would cost the equivalent of 15 Saturday newspapers in every country. 00:08:54.777 --> 00:08:57.999 We stated at the 8th item that we were to put the money, 00:08:58.024 --> 00:09:00.761 and that we were going to make it even if it didn't sell. 00:09:00.936 --> 00:09:05.198 The 9th item said that we would be happy if we saved the investment. 00:09:05.769 --> 00:09:10.300 and the 10th, that if we didn't save the investment, we didn't give a fuck... 00:09:14.553 --> 00:09:16.101 (Applause) 00:09:21.422 --> 00:09:24.468 At that moment an amazing thing happened 00:09:24.492 --> 00:09:26.998 within the community of the blog. 00:09:27.022 --> 00:09:28.544 Something we hadn't foreseen: 00:09:28.569 --> 00:09:32.075 the readers of Orsai spread the idea, 00:09:32.252 --> 00:09:34.486 they told their friends 00:09:34.511 --> 00:09:38.224 there were some men in their forties, in a town hidden in the mountain 00:09:38.248 --> 00:09:41.398 that wanted to make a magazine of popular 00:09:41.422 --> 00:09:45.472 literature, of chronic narrative, with long texts, 00:09:45.496 --> 00:09:48.650 just in the middle of the paper crisis. 00:09:49.222 --> 00:09:52.396 Before even telling them what the magazine was going 00:09:52.420 --> 00:09:54.944 to be about, the readers started buying it massively. 00:09:56.515 --> 00:10:00.930 People put a faith that I hadn't seen in a long time 00:10:00.954 --> 00:10:02.554 in a cultural product. 00:10:03.206 --> 00:10:07.614 It was bought by 10 000 people, I repeat: without knowing its contents, 00:10:07.638 --> 00:10:09.618 in pre-sale, before it was released. 00:10:10.341 --> 00:10:14.389 And it was an expensive magazine: 16 euros in Europe, 12 dollars in America. 00:10:15.437 --> 00:10:19.198 They bought it from everywhere, including Salvadorans, Costa Ricans, Peruvians, 00:10:19.222 --> 00:10:23.198 Latin Americans living in Thailand, in Japan. 00:10:23.222 --> 00:10:27.198 Readers from every region decided to distribute it themselves. 00:10:27.222 --> 00:10:31.198 We decided that magazines wouldn't be sold per unit but in packs of ten, 00:10:31.222 --> 00:10:35.878 so that you could distribute the remaining nine in your area. 00:10:37.204 --> 00:10:41.069 This way, we also killed the intermediary for distribution, 00:10:41.093 --> 00:10:42.226 which is a mafia. 00:10:42.539 --> 00:10:46.003 Distribution gets the 50% of the sale price 00:10:46.027 --> 00:10:48.611 of every publication we buy. 00:10:48.658 --> 00:10:53.989 The author gets the 8 %, the big stores, the 50 %. 00:10:54.750 --> 00:10:59.228 The first day of this year, the first number of Orsai was released. 00:10:59.252 --> 00:11:01.815 And we did so every three months, 00:11:01.839 --> 00:11:04.927 until we reached the goal of the four annual numbers. 00:11:04.952 --> 00:11:08.448 The fourth number went on sale just one week ago. 00:11:08.472 --> 00:11:11.196 Every magazine weighs about a kilogram 00:11:11.220 --> 00:11:15.946 and it makes a visual impact; it has no advertising. 00:11:16.222 --> 00:11:20.613 More than a hundred invited authors wrote through these four numbers. 00:11:20.740 --> 00:11:25.198 Among them Juan Villoro, Abelardo Castillo Nick Hornby, Agustín Fernández Mallo. 00:11:25.222 --> 00:11:27.793 It was illustrated by 'el negro' Cris, Horacio Altuna, 00:11:27.818 --> 00:11:30.953 Miguel Rep, Alberto Montt, among many others. 00:11:31.403 --> 00:11:33.868 They were all paid in euros. 00:11:34.222 --> 00:11:38.988 In the middle of all that we discovered that the dream was only possible 00:11:39.012 --> 00:11:40.928 if we talked with the readers, 00:11:40.952 --> 00:11:43.177 and so at mid-year, 00:11:43.201 --> 00:11:46.262 when we were between numbers two and three, 00:11:46.401 --> 00:11:52.197 we decided, in an also rather risky way, to turn into a publisher. 00:11:52.869 --> 00:11:56.224 The idea was to take a standard contract 00:11:56.248 --> 00:11:59.939 from my former publishing companies and write the exact opposite. 00:12:02.334 --> 00:12:04.511 The idea was not to defraud the authors; 00:12:04.535 --> 00:12:06.668 the rights always for them. 00:12:07.062 --> 00:12:11.348 If you wanted to leave the next day, "Good night, you can leave, all OK". 00:12:15.213 --> 00:12:21.483 And specially, the author is receiving the 50 % of the sale's price, 00:12:21.920 --> 00:12:24.554 instead of the 8-10%, 00:12:24.603 --> 00:12:27.760 And even more, the author has the possibility of, with a password, 00:12:27.785 --> 00:12:31.703 checking every sale and reader online. 00:12:31.728 --> 00:12:34.290 They also have the email of that reader 00:12:34.529 --> 00:12:37.317 to thank them or tell them: 00:12:37.342 --> 00:12:40.615 "I know you're buying my books and that you're paying to me." 00:12:41.937 --> 00:12:45.650 We noticed, as we moved forward, that Orsai was not a blog anymore 00:12:45.675 --> 00:12:49.198 nor a magazine, or a publishing house, 00:12:49.222 --> 00:12:52.309 but it turned into a project of the readers. 00:12:53.222 --> 00:12:57.435 Two months ago we thought of opening a bar in Buenos Aires, 00:12:57.460 --> 00:13:02.870 a meeting place for those who read the magazine, we named it Orsai. 00:13:03.192 --> 00:13:06.104 One afternoon I asked the readers of the blog 00:13:06.208 --> 00:13:09.492 if they wanted a bar to be opened and I also asked them 00:13:09.517 --> 00:13:12.888 if anyone would like to join the project as an investor. 00:13:13.343 --> 00:13:17.814 We received 204 emails in 24 hours, 00:13:18.702 --> 00:13:22.758 with people that wanted to put 1000 or 10 000, a nuts offered 80 000. 00:13:23.405 --> 00:13:26.384 There were also people who had no money, 00:13:26.408 --> 00:13:28.893 and they offered to paint the bar, 00:13:29.381 --> 00:13:31.746 or to help us with the permits 00:13:31.786 --> 00:13:34.644 as they worked in some ministry, etc. 00:13:34.668 --> 00:13:37.292 Others offered to show their paintings 00:13:37.316 --> 00:13:40.190 or to play with their bands once the bar was opened. 00:13:40.214 --> 00:13:43.341 This occurred in early August this year. 00:13:44.002 --> 00:13:47.748 The Orsai bar opened last Thursday in the heart of San Telmo, 00:13:47.772 --> 00:13:53.761 471 Humberto Primo, 2x1 beer before 10 pm. 00:13:55.137 --> 00:13:59.787 There were so many people in the opening we had to do it four times: 00:13:59.812 --> 00:14:03.500 Thursday, Friday, Saturday and last Sunday. 00:14:03.942 --> 00:14:06.604 In March we will try opening another bar in Barcelona, 00:14:06.628 --> 00:14:10.010 using the same system of investment of the readers, 00:14:10.034 --> 00:14:13.418 and the goal for the next year is to keep making magazines, 00:14:13.442 --> 00:14:16.958 this time bimonthly, and besides making a lot more books, 00:14:16.997 --> 00:14:19.776 the goal will be to open a third bar in Central America 00:14:19.801 --> 00:14:22.544 to form a sort of Iberoamerican triangle of culture, 00:14:22.568 --> 00:14:24.568 or of the drunks who read, or something... 00:14:26.503 --> 00:14:30.827 Two weeks ago we almost had two and a half tons 00:14:30.852 --> 00:14:34.537 of our books and magazines stopped in Buenos Aires' customs, 00:14:34.562 --> 00:14:37.418 due to a misunderstanding with the Secretariat of Commerce. 00:14:37.706 --> 00:14:42.198 It was a wonderful Thursday, Orsai readers from all over the world 00:14:42.222 --> 00:14:46.686 made a lot of noise in Twitter with the slogan "Free Orsai". 00:14:47.400 --> 00:14:52.198 And that was big, because 12 hours later the Argentinian government heard us, 00:14:52.222 --> 00:14:55.799 and the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers answered through Twitter 00:14:55.824 --> 00:14:58.791 saying he would personally solve the matter. 00:14:58.816 --> 00:15:01.268 The magazines were released by the next day. 00:15:01.292 --> 00:15:05.198 It's the last story I will tell. I believe that it means something. 00:15:05.222 --> 00:15:07.997 I'm sure it's the beginning of something. 00:15:08.854 --> 00:15:13.198 Cultural decisions are starting to be more and more in our hands. 00:15:13.743 --> 00:15:18.198 We no longer obey to voices in sole speakers that tell us what to do. 00:15:18.222 --> 00:15:21.198 It's us who communicate, 00:15:21.768 --> 00:15:26.466 we are 400 million people who speak Spanish. 00:15:27.133 --> 00:15:29.566 Every one of us, every region, 00:15:29.590 --> 00:15:31.917 has a different jargon that makes us unique, 00:15:31.942 --> 00:15:34.198 but that also enriches us. 00:15:34.883 --> 00:15:40.175 We understand each other, the Internet arrived some time ago to unite us, 00:15:40.200 --> 00:15:44.986 to tell us we can do things together, specially with culture, 00:15:45.010 --> 00:15:48.198 which is the fundamental base of the complexity of the mind. 00:15:48.222 --> 00:15:54.459 Almost ten years ago I opened a blog because I felt alone in a foreign country. 00:15:54.800 --> 00:15:58.859 I felt in offside, I needed to communicate with my people, 00:15:59.176 --> 00:16:01.065 and so named it Orsai. 00:16:01.222 --> 00:16:04.517 I am sure now that the cultural industry 00:16:04.541 --> 00:16:06.741 are we, the readers and the authors. 00:16:06.766 --> 00:16:08.197 And nobody else... 00:16:08.222 --> 00:16:11.627 and that the other industry, which is afraid of changes, 00:16:11.652 --> 00:16:15.198 that tries to make us believe that the Internet is a burden. 00:16:15.982 --> 00:16:21.537 the one that scratches and hurts, is dying and we'll watch it die. 00:16:22.037 --> 00:16:25.198 Culture has to be free in every way. 00:16:25.998 --> 00:16:32.198 I exhort authors and editors to, every time you release a book, 00:16:32.222 --> 00:16:36.122 upload a free PDF the same day, 00:16:36.146 --> 00:16:37.746 because you will sell more. 00:16:37.927 --> 00:16:42.198 We depended on a greedy industry for years, 00:16:42.855 --> 00:16:45.667 buying what they wanted us to buy. 00:16:45.691 --> 00:16:48.816 Now suddenly, and more and more, 00:16:49.578 --> 00:16:51.681 they're starting to be "orsai". 00:16:52.205 --> 00:16:53.801 Thank you.