Teresa Pintó: you are not just selling the rights for one book, you are building author’s career together

Teresa Pintó is a literary agent in foreign rights department of the world-famous Carmen Balcells Agency, founded in 1960.  The agency made a revolution in the Spanish-speaking literary world, and up to these days has been representing Nobel prize winners such as Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, Álvaro Mutis, Miguel Ángel Asturias, as well as the stars like Isabel Allende, Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, Miguel Delibes to name a few. Teresa has been an online guest for the last two Book Arsenals and keeps cooperating with Ukrainian publishers. This is the last piece for this year’s special project “Literature for Export” and it would be incomplete without a talk with Teresa Pintó.

— Carmen Balcells Agency is undoubtedly familiar to anyone who published or ever thought of publishing Spanish stars. Tell us how it all started and what is the range you are working with nowadays. 

— Carmen Balcells established her agency 60 years ago when publishing world was totally different. Back then authors used to work with publishers directly, signing the contracts on publisher’s terms. Carmen laid the foundation for future industry creating the environment where authors can devote all their time to writing. Now, we have around 200 authors not only from Spain but also from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia etc. This means we represent the authors who write in Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, Catalan, Gaelic and other languages of Spain. Among the authors we represent there are 6 Nobel prize winners. Carmen Balcells died in 2015 and since then, the agency is managed by her son Miquel Palomares.

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