Overview of the state of Spain’s ebook business
By Paul Biba
Publishing Perspectives has an overview of the Feria del Libro Digital, Spain’s firse ebook fair. Earlier this year digital companies had been shut out of Liber, which is Spain’s traditional book fair.
According the the article, the fair showed that Spain’s ebook industry “is still stuck in beta” with publishers not understanding how the digital publishing model works. There seems to be a lack of sources for Spanish ebooks and the collaborative e-book distribution program announced earlier this year by Spain’s Big Three—Random House Mondadori, Planeta and Santillana—is now scheduled to ramp up for spring 2010.
For more info see the article here.
November 28th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
My expectations for Spain’s ‘ebook publishing industry’ are extremely low. This, based upon my experience with their *print* publishing industry. They do short runs, and reprint few titles. At least one publisher re-uses ISBN’s. Or at least they were as of 2000-2001. A good indication of a lack of understanding of data. The online ordering system of one of the largest distributors — whom I no longer use at all, so if I’m not alone may have shrunk in the meantime — can only be described as backward. Last time I ordered, it automatically sent an e-mail message to the distributor with the citation of the desired title. And the subject line: ‘Pedido’. Yikes. E-publishing? That’s really *hard*. And *technological*.
I would love to hear about this from a contributor or commenter who knows more than I do about publishing — and reading — in Spain. Is reading still an exclusive activity of the upper classes?