Between the essay and the memory, Ignacio Echevarría offers us a panoramic and reflective evocation of Claudio López Lamadrid (1960-2019) as the prescriber who represents the most plausible model of editor in the 21st century. Echevarría and López Lamadrid were friends since adolescence and later colleagues from the publishing world, so this essay is also an opportunity for two colleagues united by books to talk again. Together with the foreword by Emiliano Monge, this book is a praise of the craft and a personal journey through the long roads of literature.

How does someone become an editor? What is the process that makes any book possible? 'A vocation as an editor' narrates that journey from beginning to end through the impulses and desires that make it possible, and transforms the editor, invisible by tradition, into the protagonist who observes himself and makes his relevance evident in the contemporary world. Other topics that are explored in this volume, commissioned especially by Gris Tormenta: the formation of criteria, the determining features of an independent publishing house, the relations of Spanish between the various countries, the relevance of the critic in commercial mechanisms, codes an editor's reading and relationship with his writers.

Claudio asked me and allowed me to write books that I would not have dared to write otherwise. —Rodrigo Fresán

Just because he edited Foster Wallace, he was already a hero to me. —Leila Guerriero

In the very near future, the publisher will occupy the place previously occupied by reference brands. —Claudio López Lamadrid

This is the third title in the Editor collection: narratives that discover the different long and unexpected processes that exist before a book is opened by a reader. Rare finds and original stories about the great ideas that happen behind the scenes of writing: a literary exploration from curiosity.