B&N Announces Spanish-Language eBookstore for the U.S. Market

Press Release via The Digital Reader: "Barnes & Noble today announced NOOKbooks en espanol, the first-ever Spanish language digital bookstore in the United States, and the best – and growing – selection of Spanish titles, including bestsellers, new releases, classics, works in translation and more. With NOOKbooks en espanol, Barnes & Noble customers now have nearly instant access to thousands of popular Spanish language titles, including thousands of free works, to be enjoyed across a wide range of platforms, including NOOKcolor, NOOK 3G and NOOK Wi-Fi, and the company’s free software available for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android, BlackBerry, PC, and Mac."

The New Spanish Civil War: eBook Visionaries vs. Publishing Luddites

Publishing Perspectives notes two intriguing new publishing alliances in Spain -

The first is ​​​​​​​​​​​​Unebook, a digital platform created by 62 of Spain’s university presses to digitize and sell their content. With the help of digital distributor Publidisa , the group has created a direct-to-consumer website www.unebook.es where titles from the participating publishers are offered for sale in PDF format with Adobe DRM; Publidisa is also distributing the titles to mainstream online booksellers including Casa del Libro.

Meanwhile, up in Galicia, ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​the Consejo de Cultura Gallega (Galician Culture Council) announced the formation of a new “cluster” that will bring together the area’s publishers, distributors, and booksellers in order to “respond to the e-book threat” – as the cluster’s new president, Alfonso García Sanmartín, described it. In Galicia 98% percent of the population speaks gallego, one of Spain’s four official languages (usually in addition to fluent Spanish), which has given rise to a regional publishing industry to serve readers in both languages.  While García Sanmartín asserts that the publishers in Galicia who have e-books on offer have sold no more than 30 copies a year, and that the digital future “is likely to arrive much more slowly than what has been predicted”, the cluster nonetheless hopes to create a common strategy to help all of its members — the group is firm in its desire to maintain the traditional publisher-distributor-bookseller value chain — weather the disruption brought about by technological changes to the industry.

Spanish eBookstore Leqtor to Launch App for iPad

Nate the Great, the Digital Reader: "Leqtor, an ebookstore with titles in Castilian and Catalan, announced yesterday that they will launch an iPad app on 15 October. The app will support in app purchases as well as all ebooks previously purchased from Leqtor, but it’s not clear yet of it will support ebooks purchased elsewhere."