The surging popularity of the Kindle and Nook allows publishers to offer Spanish-language books in the U.S. at far lower prices than for printed copies.
For decades, finding Spanish-language books in the U.S. was like tilting at windmills.
Booksellers stocked few titles in the language of Cervantes, and those they carried came at a hefty premium. A paperback copy of “Don Quijote” in the original Spanish could easily cost triple the price of a deluxe hard-bound translation in English — if it could be found at all.
Retailers blamed the expense of importing books printed in Spain and Latin America. And U.S. publishers lost faith in the market after botched attempts to translate English-language bestsellers produced error-ridden Spanish versions that sold poorly.
The upshot was that even in heavily Latino cities such as Los Angeles, where Spanish-language television and radio command huge audiences, readers of libros en español found little more than bilingual dictionaries and religious tracts buried in the back of bookstores. More.
See: Los Angeles Times
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