Who's Who in U.S. Spanish-Language Publishing—High Demand, Short Supply, and the Market's Savvy Buyers

Managing Spanish-language Collection Development

By Raya Kuzyk -- Críticas, 11/15/2006

Developing a collection of English-language books is a Herculean enough feat, but make it a matter of Spanish-language books, and the going's that much tougher: there's spottier distribution, for one; limited selection; irregular pricing (dependent, as it is, on international shipping and currency rates); and unanticipated delays.

These frustrations aside, experienced Spanish-language collection development librarians share one big thing in common: they're scrambling to fill in the gaps. Críticas set out to meet some of the people steering the U.S. Spanish-language book market through their day-to-day collection decisions. We wanted to find out what challenges they face, which distributors and publishers they work with, and which resources they rely on and recommend.

Talk to booksellers and librarians about what kind of books the Spanish-speaking population is hankering to read, and you'll get distinctly different responses. This points to just how different the sales sector is from the public-service one, and beyond that, how much variety there is among the Spanish-speaking.

Where bookstores are concerned, the self-help/spirituality boom is apparently not just for English-speaking audiences. One of the stores owned by Juan Manuel Girón, founder and president, Girón Spanish Bookstore/Distribution, is in Pilsen, at the center of Chicago's Mexican community. He calls it "one of our most revealing resources," a place where trends come to light. Since the 2003 release of Rick Warren's Una vida con propósito (The Purpose-Driven Life;Vida), he's noticed a demand for books on spirituality and self-help. "We are not a religious bookstore—we try to remain as secular as possible—yet it's difficult to ignore the need, the numbers," he says.

Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Lenore Feder can vouch for those numbers. According to her records, two of the top five Spanish-language best sellers for the week ending September 16 were just such books—Una vida con propósito at #8 and Joel Osteen's Su Mejor Vida Ahora (Your Best Life Now; Strang Communications, 2005) at #2.

Then ask librarians what's on their wish lists, and you immediately get a sense of their patrons' comparatively wide-ranging interests and reference needs. Staff members of the Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL) could use a whole slew of Spanish-language books that are in short supply: TestPrep, history, mathematics, geography, and science books; current-year encyclopedias; popular materials and titles from the original countries; and audiobooks. Of the latter, Radamés Suárez, Spanish-language collections/cultural arts librarian, Queens Borough Public Library, says, "It seems that Spanish-language book publishers are not keeping up to pace with their English-language counterparts. Literature in Spanish is among the richest in the world and would naturally lend itself marvelously to this medium."

Wendi Bost, head of collection development, Orange County Library System, Orlando, adds other multimedia materials to the mix. "For anyone starting a Spanish-language collection," she says, "our experience has shown Spanish-language audiovisual materials to be very popular. Whether it be music on CD or entertainment or informational DVDs, these materials all have high circulation rates." She also fields a lot of requests for best-selling fiction, but of a particular type: "We see a lot of translated fiction and would like to see more best-selling works originally written in Spanish," she says.

"I really have trouble finding recent medical information, a request we get all the time," says Megan McArdle, director of collection development, Chicago Public Library. "Half the time it's hard to find anything in Spanish, and when I do, it's been translated from English, which builds in this lag. [The English-language edition] might not have been a really recent book to start with."

For the majority of Spanish-language collection development librarians, doing business with distributors and publishers is a buffet-style affair. Going to one source wouldn't be taking full advantage of what's out there, since no single vendor has everything these buyers need. Tapping into as many other kinds of resources as possible is standard practice, too.

Elissa Miller, adult collection development librarian, Multicultural Services, Arlington County Public Library, VA, says she doesn't have enough fingers on one hand to count off the distributors and publishers with which she regularly deals, including Ingram Book Group, Brodart, Bilingual Publications Company (BPC), Lectorum Publications (part of Scholastic), Baker & Taylor (B&T), and Book Wholesalers Inc. In an admirable feat of streamlining, Bost has cut her list of go-to vendors down to three: B&T ("they provide access to a large array of materials available for ordering electronically and provide MARC records for titles"); BPC ("they offer a personal touch in developing book lists and suggestions tailored for our community's needs"); and Downtown Book Center ("they give us the ability to obtain special, harder-to-find titles from Latin America").

Even though Hennepin County Library is based in Minnetonka, MN, juvenile selection librarian Wendy Woodfill prefers Lectorum and BPC. Her reason, however, is the personalized service. Unlike giants like Ingram or Brodart, she says, Lectorum, BPC, and other smaller vendors, like Chulainn Publishing Corporation, have "tremendous knowledge of what's being published in Spanish around the world. They won't just send me generated lists; they'll do the research for my particular needs." Staff members at QBPL also work with Lectorum and BPC, the two biggest Spanish-language book dealers in New York City.

An assortment of Spanish-language resources, online and otherwise, can be accessed through many of these vendors and independently. QBPL staff relies on B&T's online database of published, pending, and out-of-print books; Amazon.com's Libros en Español; the book club Mosaico for ideas about what to buy; and Global Books in Print. Other resources the staff mentions finding useful are Críticas and publisher catalogs such as Ediciones Serres, Random House Español, and Ediciones TUTOR.

Mike Eitner, collection services manager at the Denver Public Library, likes to browse online "to see what stores have that's new, what they're marketing," he says. Three of his favorites sites are Librerías Gandhi (www.gandhi.com.mx, in Spanish), the Spanish-language section of aBOOKS.com (in English), and Librería Santa Fe (www.lsf.com.ar, in Spanish).

McArdle and Miller both espouse the merits of attending international book fairs. "I loved being able to walk around and talk to the vendors," says McArdle of her experience attending Guadalajara International Book Fair for the first time last year. She was walking with the library's children's book specialist, discussing how there really didn't seem to be any good sets of Spanish-language books on Mexican states. "We talked to a couple of publishers who said, 'You know, that's a good idea.' So maybe in a couple of years we'll see a nice set of books on Mexican states."

Miller, who's been attending Guadalajara for 20 years, says it's about more than just gaining awareness of publishing trends or familiarizing yourself with all the titles on the market. "You make a direct link with the actual public, meeting not just publishers but readers from all over the world," she says. "It goes beyond networking—this is the public—it's an integral educational experience as well."

The rule of thumb among all the buyers Críticas spoke to seems to be this: diversify. Spread the wealth around. Choose several vendors, then whittle down your top picks based on selection, service, and speed. If familiar with Spanish, attend international book fairs. Until the system improves, buyers everywhere are going to have to be the picture of flexibility, patience, and resolve. Soon, no doubt, the wish lists will get shorter. In the meantime, let's hope that Girón's earlier words—"it's difficult to ignore the need, the numbers"—become prophetic for publishers and distributors everywhere.

The Librarians Wendi Bost Wendi Bost finds it hard to get current information on citizenship laws and immigration rights. "Given changes in the U.S. immigration process and test," she says, "our patrons would greatly benefit from material with clear and updated information." Bost began working at the Orange County Public Library System in Orlando in 1990 as circulation supervisor; in 1999, she switched to head of collection development. "It seemed like a logical move, given my background in retailing, purchasing, and budgets," she says. Today, as acquisitions services manager, Bost works with several staff members in meeting the needs of the Spanish-speaking population of Orlando, most of whom hail from Puerto Rico, by trying to create a collection that "is relevant, is timely, and pops." Unfortunately, she says, "even at the Spanish fairs, the Spanish-language materials do not have the curb appeal of what you would see at an American Library Association conference." Mike Eitner Mike Eitner, collection services manager, Denver Public Library, estimates that the library spends about six percent of its budget on non-English-language materials, mostly Spanish and Vietnamese. This tight budget is a major impediment to developing the collection, but he adds that limited print runs are an even greater source of frustration than limited funds. "If you don't buy something when it's brand new, it's harder to get later on," he says. "You could be interested in a title and not be able to afford it at the time, then later, it's almost always out of stock." To combat this, Eitner purchases nonfiction titles "in subject areas customers use heavily," and always purchases new titles for these areas "as soon as I become aware of them." A Spanish major at Beloit College, WI, before receiving his MLS from the University of Pittsburgh, Eitner started his career as a public service librarian at Las Vegas-Clark County Library District. In 1999, he joined the Denver Public library as branch supervisor. Eitner's perfect world would include greater incidence of the simultaneous publication of popular nonfiction. "All our patrons are exposed to the same issues in current affairs, and frequently, what is a newsworthy book in Latin America creates minimal interest here," he says. "The buzz created by the publication of a book is all but gone by the time the Spanish-language version is released months later." Chris Freeman Since June of this year, Patterson Branch Manager Chris Freeman, Stanislaus County Library, Modesto, CA, has been buying all the adult Spanish-language materials for his system, which serves more than 500,000. Before then, he worked in circulation and reference in the academic library field, where selecting was a much smaller part of his job. His learning curve might have been high, but he’s secure in many of the choices he’s made so far. “Ingram has been a good source for mainstream, high-demand titles,” he shares, “while La Casa del Libro,” an independent bookseller in San Francisco, “makes materials easily accessible to the library that would normally be very difficult or impossible for us to acquire.” A regular concern is the uncertainty over title availability. “It can be very frustrating to place an order only to wait several weeks before discovering it’s no longer available,” he says. “This is one reason I really enjoy working with an independent seller who brings me physical copies of books I can purchase on the spot.” Kathryn King While working as selection services coordinator for the Dallas Public Library, Kathryn King selected Spanish-language music CDs, Spanish-language juvenile audiovisual material, and Spanish-language adult fiction. Today, seven months into her job as adult materials selector at Fort Worth Public Library, TX, King focuses a good portion of her energy on getting to know her community so that she can best serve its needs. One way she does this is by consulting U.S. Census data and the Texas Education Agency’s school data. But, she says, “trying to get a read on the community is difficult. In many instances, you just have to get out there.” King’s definition of getting out there is fairly broad. “I want to see what’s on the neighborhood billboards and in the stores on the book, magazine, CD, and DVD racks,” she says. “When I’m flipping channels, I stop at Telemundo and Univision to see what ads are playing, and I check the playlists for the local Latino radio stations.” Because she has yet to find a resource she’s “100 percent happy with,” she says she also spends a lot of her legwork searching through publishers’ and vendors’ catalogs. Megan McArdle Spanish-language books are collected in 41 of the 78 branches that make up the Chicago Public Library (CPL); approximately five percent of the library's budget is allotted to Spanish-language collections. Megan McArdle has been the director of collection development, adult acquisitions, at CPL for two years, before which she served as collection development specialist. Under both titles, she's collected actively in more than a dozen different languages, but Spanish-language titles are the only ones purchased centrally, with the individual branches spending their discretionary budgets from McArdle's pre-selected lists of titles. If McArdle had her way, she'd at last be able to find an overseas vendor that could get materials to her quickly and with a good fill rate. As it stands, however, most of the materials she's able to get "aren't hardcover and the quality of the paper isn't always as high as we're used to" when it comes from U.S. publishers, she says. "That's a challenge, because these materials get heavy use, and to start out with a book of sub-par production value means we get fewer circs out of it." Elissa Miller Elissa Miller has been the adult collection development librarian at Arlington County Library, VA, since 1996. Her prior work included Spanish–language collection development at the Latin American Library in Oakland, CA. For Miller it's "a constant challenge to identify and evaluate material so that you can select what you want and need to create dynamic collections, streamlining acquisitions." She meets that challenge as best she can by attending international fairs and conferences and zeroing in on books on topics like career, business, the handling of legal and commercial transactions—or, "anything that has to do with the experience of living in this country." She says that being responsible for collection development in other languages at the library gives her an edge, as it means she's familiar with various vendor's tools, "and those vendors are only carrying more and more Spanish-language titles" because of growing demand. Pascale Pine As one of three Spanish specialists at New York Public Library's Donnell Library, Parisian–born Pascale Pine has been buying Spanish-language books for the last five years. Her library career at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France) and her mastery of Spanish landed her at Donnell. Pine struggles with keeping the reference section stocked for her Spanish-speaking patrons, who very often "are doing research or have assignments for classes that require a wide range of books." It's especially difficult given the library's "restrictive budget," which she says prevents her from attending international book fairs. Radamés Suárez This August, Radamés Suárez became the Spanish-language collections/cultural arts librarian for the 62 branches of Queens Borough Public Library, NY, where 2.4 percent of the 6.8 million books and media materials are in Spanish. In 2001, he worked in the Fine Arts Department of the same library, though even then, he was part of a committee of Spanish-speaking librarians that helps some 23 other libraries maintain their Spanish-language collections. "If I am buying books for a library with a large Mexican community," he says of one of the things that makes his job difficult, "I will try to buy books published in Mexico that are more likely to use idioms familiar to Mexican-Americans than books published [elsewhere]." Buying books in Spanish, he adds, is "more challenging than meets the eye." That's why every year he goes to the Guadalajara Book Fair, "to get the best pick of all the latest books out on the market," he says. Wendy Woodfill Wendy Woodfill has been with the Hennepin County Library, Minnetonka, MN, for 21 years. She estimates that of Hennepin Cty. Lib.'s 430,000 titles, approximately 3300 are in Spanish. However hard it might be to build a strong Spanish-language collection, seven or eight years ago, as Woodfill remembers, it was much worse. "A lot of the publishers we used to have access to abroad were very literary," she says. "The population here has a lower education, many of them are coming to work in the mines, the meatpacking plants, at stocking jobs. They're looking for quick beach reads." These days, though she admits the syntax of her John Grisham and Mary Higgins Clark purchases is more suitable for her patrons, she says she would like to see even more ephemeral literature, especially that set in Mexico or any of the central or South American communities.