People say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but everyone does.

In Colombia, classic literature faces a brutal reality: outside of mandatory school curriculums, these centuries-old texts compete with Netflix, TikTok, and bestsellers that feel immediately relevant. Many readers believe classics are too dense to ever read for pleasure.

But what if the problem isn’t the books themselves,
but the way we’ve been selling them?

This project set out to understand how publishing houses can make classic literature feel relevant again by listening to readers instead of tradition. Through in-depth conversations with 13 readers and a decade-old book club, I uncovered a pattern publishers have been consistently overlooking.

The findings reveal a significant gap between how institutions market classics and how contemporary readers actually experience them. This disconnect represents both the core problem and the strategic opportunity.