Editorial Soldesol

What Editorial Soldesol is

Editorial Soldesol is a Spanish self-publishing house ("editorial de autoedición") that has been helping authors publish since 2015, according to its home page. It is not an open upload platform. The home page calls its process "Autoedición de Calidad", quality self-publishing, "porque seleccionamos los manuscritos que publicamos, cuidamos cada detalle y trabajamos cada libro con criterio editorial": because it selects the manuscripts it publishes, looks after every detail and works on each book with editorial judgment. The author self-publishes, but the house decides whether a book is ready.

The home page opens with a line from Sol Ravassa, the coordinadora editorial: "Si nos das una buena historia, te devolveremos un gran libro", give us a good story and we will give you back a great book. It claims more than 400 books published in one heading and more than 600 in another, both describing authors who keep publishing with the house.

For this directory, the relevant part is how Soldesol handles printed copies. Its printed books can be sold on demand: the book is printed only after a reader has bought it, through the printing house it works with, and it is listed with bookshops rather than warehoused.

A publisher that says no

The home page is blunt about its selection. Under the heading "Tu libro va a ser el próximo bestseller" it says this is what most self-publishing houses will try to make an author believe. Soldesol promises the opposite: if, after reading a text, the team thinks it is not ready to be published, it will say so plainly, and it will not let an author invest in a book that is not ready. "Porque hacerlo bien también es saber cuándo hacerlo", because doing it well also means knowing when to do it. The page closes the point with a line from Sol Ravassa's father: "Así nunca te harás rica, Sol", you will never get rich that way, Sol.

Authors send a manuscript through a button on the home page to start the process. The page lists the worries it is written for: not knowing how a book is edited, whether to print copies or sell only digitally, how the commissions of the different sales channels work, and whether the book will sell at all. The house says it takes care of the whole process so the book is not only published but well made.

Soldesol also publishes for organizations. The home page says it works on editorial projects for companies, associations and institutions with informational and artistic aims.

How print on demand works at Soldesol

The house explains its print-on-demand model in a long blog post, "Edición bajo demanda: ¿Cómo funciona?". The book is produced only once it has been sold to the reader, then printed and shipped; the post calls this 1:1 distribution, "se vende un libro, se imprime un libro", one book sold, one book printed.

The mechanics are handled by Soldesol and its printer. The post says the house provides the service "a través de nuestra imprenta", through its printing house: Soldesol fills in all of the book's metadata (format, spine, weight, price, synopsis, author, author biography, covers) and uploads print-ready files. That information goes into a general catalog to which all the bookshops in the Red de Librerías are connected. As the database updates, the book begins to appear in the bookshops' online catalogs. A reader can then ask for it in a shop, the bookseller orders it directly from the printer, and, the post says, "Tu libro será servido en un periodo de 72 horas", the book will be supplied within 72 hours.

According to the post, this is how a Soldesol book reaches large booksellers such as FNAC, Casa del Libro and Carrefour. For a guaranteed point of sale to send readers to, the house points to Agapea, where all of its print-on-demand books are listed.

The post also sets out what the house cannot control. Its printer makes a book accessible to every connected bookshop, but each shop decides when the book is actually available in its web catalog, and some update weekly while others update monthly. There is always a gap between activating a title on demand and seeing it for sale, and the house says it cannot control how long a given bookshop takes.

Quality and flexibility

Soldesol states that books printed on demand through it are produced to the same quality and appearance as its conventional print editions, so readers will not notice whether a copy was printed on demand or in a traditional run.

The post lists the advantages as the house sees them. Printing on demand is cheaper, makes short runs viable, and removes the problems of space, storage and logistics. It keeps the book up to date: an author who wants to change a word does not have to wait for a whole print run to sell out; the post's example is a cousin left out of the dedication, fixable before it splits the family. And the house says the process is kinder to the environment because production matches demand, an issue it describes itself as particularly sensitive to.

Where the books can be sold

The post lists the markets where its printer has agreements and bookshop presence, for both print and print-on-demand editions, as of the date it was written. In the post's own words the list is: Estados Unidos; Latinoamérica (Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador, México, Perú, Uruguay); Europa (España, Portugal, Austria, Bélgica, República Checa, Estonia, Francia, Alemania, Grecia, Hungría, Irlanda, Italia, Lituania, Luxemburgo, Noruega, Polonia, Eslovaquia, Eslovenia, Suiza); and Gran Bretaña.

Beyond printing

The site's menu covers the rest of the publishing path: rates (Tarifas), promotion, distribution, the house's catalog, events and FAQs, plus a self-publishing guide and a page of testimonials. The blog lists the house's presence at book fairs in Madrid, Almería, Murcia and Granada, and practical posts on cover design, legal formalities, selling in bookshops, types of proofreading, choosing a title and pacing a narrative. Authors can also join a free mailing list about self-publishing, promotion and selling their book.

Who it suits

Editorial Soldesol suits a Spanish-speaking author who wants a publisher's judgment and a finished, edited book, and wants printed copies orderable through bookshops without holding stock. The selective intake, the full handling of metadata and files, and the bookshop network across its printer's markets are the draws.

It is the wrong choice for someone who wants to upload a finished file and publish immediately, since the house reads first and may say the book is not ready, and for sellers looking for a print-on-demand supplier to fulfill their own store's orders. Its rates are published on a separate Tarifas page.