# Large market for Spanish-language books in the US


I love seeing material in multiple languages, even languages I don't
understand. As populations have become more diverse around the world,
public libraries have risen to the challenge, and whether you visit the
[Public Library in
Oslo](http://www.deichmanske-bibliotek.oslo.kommune.no/english/), or in
[Toronto](http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/), they have wonderful
collections of children and adult books (and often films, DVDs,
magazines and newspapers as well) in a wide variety of languages. In
Toronto it's fun going "branch shopping", since the library has
something like 99 branches, and each branch tailors its material to the
local population - thus you can see many Indian languages at the Gerrard
branch, and Polish and Serbian at the Roncesvalles branch.

However, the big chain bookstores in Canada are anglo-only. If you visit
a Chapters (pretty much the only chain bookstore in Canada), and ask for
books in other languages, they'll show you the dictionary section. They
don't have anything in French (in Toronto at least, maybe in Ottawa it's
different), nor in Spanish or Chinese. Certainly, in the various
Chinatowns there are great Chinese-language bookstores, but I always
wondered - if you are successful Chinese lawyer living in a nice house
in the suburbs, why is it that you have to drive downtown to Spadina (or
to the huge Chinese mall in North York) to pick up the latest Hong Kong
novel? Why can't you do it while taking your kids to a movie at the
mall?

I've also noticed that US bookstores tend to carry more and more
materials in Spanish. Of course, the Latinos in the US probably make up
a bigger percentage as a single linguistic group (especially in the
south) than any group does in for example Toronto (even the Chinese). In
addition, at least for the Chinese, a lot of the second-generation kids
cannot read Chinese, and there's the added complication of traditional
vs. simplified characters. But still. Canada keeps thinking of itself as
the fruit bowl and the US as the melting pot, but I wonder. As I've
[written about
before](http://reganmian.net/blog/2007/12/18/completely-non-representative-reflections-on-new-york/),
I found people much more confidently speaking different languages in New
York than Toronto (anecdotally).

![](http://www.piedepagina.com/numero9/imagenes/portada_codigo.jpg)All
this to say that I came across an interesting piece on books translated
into English through Ethan Zuckerman's [always excellent
blog](http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/). It contains some very
interesting news about the rise of Spanish publishing within the US,
including the fact that *El Código Da Vinci* (*[The Da Vinci
Code](http://www.amazon.com/Da-Vinci-Code-Dan-Brown/dp/0385504209%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0385504209 "The Da Vinci Code")*
by Dan Brown in Spanish) sold 300,000 copies. Here's an excerpt from the
paper:

*The Bilingual Publishing Trend in the US Spanish is the second most
commonly used language in the US after English. According to the 2006
American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau, Spanish is
the primary language spoken at home by over 34 million people aged five
or older. The US is home to more than 40 million Hispanics, making it
the world’s fifth-largest Spanish-speaking community after Mexico,
Colombia, Spain and Argentina.*

*A little over a decade ago, Spanish-language books occupied the
smallest slice of shelf space at bookstores around the country. But the
2000 census and its revelations about the fast-growing Hispanic
population sparked renewed interest among US publishing houses in
meeting the reading wishes of Spanish speakers. Then came Dan Brown’s
The Da Vinci Code, which not only shot up the international charts but
quickly became one of the best-selling translations into Spanish of all
time. While successful Spanish-language titles in the US typically sell
between 15,000 and 20,000 copies, more than 300,000 copies of El Código
Da Vinci were scooped off bookstore shelves across the land, ushering in
what some described as a new era for Spanish-language books in America.*

*Now publishers are starting to time the release of English and Spanish
versions so they coincide. Best-selling translations have helped the
book market overall by alerting readers to the broadening selection of
Spanish titles available at their local bookstores.*

*That was when several major US publishers began establishing divisions
to cultivate new Hispanic talent and focus on the sale of both
Spanish-language books and English books geared for the Hispanic market.
About that time, large chain booksellers began hiring Spanish
book-buyers to study market demographics and expand their Libros en
Español sections. Publishers from Spain were for many years the only
players serving the Hispanic market. But now they are competing with US
houses for new authors and translation rights.*

The author goes on to say that perhaps the rise of e-book readers (which
I have been experimenting with lately, with excellent results) will
enable publishers to sell directly to customers abroad, for example
Spanish and Latin-American publishers could set up websites marketed
directly to the diasporas in the US. I personally would love to buy
Chinese and Indonesian novels online, if they were in an open format (no
DRM), and I could easily pay a reasonable price.

Stian