Columbia and Uniandes agree two-way book distribution deal
Columbia University Press will store, sell and ship Spanish-language books from Bogotá to bookshops and libraries across North America, Europe and Asia under a new two-way distribution deal.
In return, Ediciones Uniandes, the book publishing division of the University of the Andes in Bogotá, will distribute select Columbia titles in Latin America. The direction runs both ways. Each press continues to choose and produce its own books.
Distribution, meaning warehousing, sales representation and shipping for another publisher's books within an agreed territory, is the engine here. A title reaches a shelf faster when an organisation nearby holds stock and handles orders and returns. That unglamorous middle step decides what a reader can actually order.
The two publishers launched the agreement at the FILUNI meeting in Mexico City, Mexico, as reported by Publishing Perspectives on 24 September 2026. Uniandes is the first Spanish-language publisher in Columbia's distribution portfolio, meaning the group of outside presses whose books Columbia handles in its territories. That first changes the shape of the portfolio, which until now had no Spanish-language partner in that group.
Under the terms described in that report, Uniandes takes responsibility for select Columbia books in Latin America. Columbia takes responsibility for select Spanish-language Uniandes books in North America, Europe and Asia. Each side starts with a selection of titles, rather than the whole list. The split follows language and sales ground, with each house working the markets it knows best.
The operations are led by Brad Hebel, Interim Director and Chief Operating Officer of Columbia University Press, and Juan Camilo González Galvis, Director of Publications of Ediciones Uniandes. Uniandes has spent more than four decades publishing and disseminating research, according to Columbia's distributed-presses page. Columbia published its own notice, titled "Columbia University Press Announces a New Partnership with Ediciones Uniandes", on 18 September 2026, according to Columbia University Press.
What makes this stand out is the symmetry. University-press distribution often flows one way, from a larger house outward. Here English-language scholarship moves south and Spanish-language scholarship moves north, east and west.
For readers, this means shorter distances between the two lists. A student in Bogotá can find a Columbia book without a long import wait. A reader in New York, London or Tokyo can find a Uniandes book on a local order.
