Amazon launched “eBooks Kindle en Español,” which carries 30,000 e-books in Spanish — including an exclusive title by Paulo Coelho. The company also offers Spanish-language customer support.
Amazon says that eBooks Kindle en Español offers “the most Spanish-language bestsellers, as measured by Nielsen.” That includes “all of the Spanish-language Nielsen best sellers available as e-books in the United States, and 65 of the top-100 Spanish-language print best sellers from Amazon.com.” Bestselling Brazilian author Paulo Coelho is offering a $1.99 nonfiction title, El Libro de los Manuales, exclusively through the store.
Amazon also struck a deal with Spanish-newspaper El Pais (Grupo Prisa) through which it offers “compilations of articles from El Pais, including exclusive pieces from Mexican journalists writing about Mexican current affairs,” . eBooks Kindle en Español also offers subscriptions to Latin American newspapers. Amazon also has translated nine Kindle Singles into Spanish.
Barnes & Noble competition
The U.S. Hispanic market is also an area of concentration for Amazon competitor Barnes & Noble. Last year, B&N’s Patricia Arancibia said the company’s sales of foreign-language e-books were growing faster than sales of English e-books, and “it’s one area where we completely win over any competitor.” Barnes & Noble’s Nook Books en Espanol currently contains 45,293 titles— a larger number of titles than eBooks Kindle en Español carries.
Last September Amazon launched a Spanish website targeting the book reader market in Spain. The site, Amazon.es went live on Sept. 14th and offers books in Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Basque. The Spanish site joined Amazon's other websites for the US, Canadian, English, French, Italian, Chinese and Japanese markets.
