Recession…Proof? The State Of The Spanish-Language Book Market.

by Judith Rosen -- Críticas, 5/15/2008

If anyone in this country wants to grow their business, they have to take account of the Hispanic demographic,” says Rayo editorial director René Alegria. Indeed, Spanish-language books have seen sales rise for most of this decade. At Barnes & Noble, for example, sales more than doubled between 2002 and 2007, says buyer Amanda Schilling. One indication of just how far the category has come, notes Ernesto Martínez, buyer of Spanish and Latino Studies at both Borders and Walden, is that “people used to shop for what was available in Spanish. Now they come for what they want to read.”

In 2007, two of the most requested books were Rhonda Byrne’s El Secreto (The Secret; Atria Books), which has 260,000 copies in print (and sales of more than 91,000 copies in stores that report to Nielsen Bookscan), and Gabriel García Márquez’s El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera; Vintage), the first book initially published in Spanish to receive the Oprah Book Club imprimatur.

And there’s reason for optimism from booksellers and publishers. According to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth, Hispanics, the nation’s largest minority, will number an estimated 47.8 million people in 2010, up from 35.3 million in the 2000 census. Their buying power is also projected to grow, from more than $860 billion in 2007 to more than $1.2 trillion by 2012.

Still, there could be trouble ahead. The strength of the euro coupled with a weakened dollar has already affected Spanish publishing giant Planeta, which closed its Miami office at the end of March and moved its U.S. distribution operations to Mexico City. Schoenhof’s Foreign Books in Cambridge, MA, like some other bookstores that cater to foreign-language readers, raised prices recently, says general director Daniel Eastman, and will eat some continued cost increases to avoid raising them again. On top of that, Spanish-language publishers could lose one of their biggest outlets with Borders’s recent announcement that it is on the selling block.

Publishing by the numbers
In many ways the Spanish-language book market resembles the English-language one; each publisher chooses a different approach to reach readers, in this case depending on the level of acculturation they are targeting. HarperCollins’s Rayo imprint, for instance, no longer publishes books in English; it issues 40 to 50 Spanish-language titles a year. Rayo’s new Esenciales series presents deluxe paperback editions of Spanish-language classics as part of its two-year copublishing agreement with Planeta. However, this fall Rayo will launch a series of self-help titles, Adelante (or Go for it!), which will include Spanish-language originals and translations of English language books.

While Rayo is trying to avoid pigeon-holing Hispanic authors writing in English by moving their works into other Harper imprints, Celebra, which is headed by former Rayo executive Raymond Garcia, is taking the opposite approach. It will publish 13 English-language books by or about Latino celebrities this year geared toward highly acculturated Hispanics, those who are born in the United States, speak English, and have high levels of income and education. The imprint’s first book, Geraldo Rivera’s His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S., debuted in Februrary at #33 on The New York Times extended list.

To mirror acculturated Hispanics’ book-buying patterns—65 percent in English, 35 percent in Spanish—Garcia plans to translate 30 percent of Celebra’s list into Spanish. “I’m looking to accomplish what Ugly Betty has accomplished, a mainstream show that garners Hispanic viewers,” says Garcia.

Milena Alberti-Pérez, director of Spanish-language publishing at Vintage Español, prefers to release a limited number of Spanish-language titles across a broad spectrum of categories. “I think of myself as a microcosm of a large publishing house,” she says. Although her list includes literary fiction like this fall’s Spanish-language translation of Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer prize-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao), much of the imprint’s growth has come from nonfiction aimed at immigrants. Her audience, she says, needs to buy a computer and get it working, something they might not have done in their native land. They are also looking for help with personal finance, fitness, and immigration. One surprise Vintage best seller last year, Downtown Book Center CEO Raquel Roque’s Cocina cubana (Taste of Cuba), shows that Spanish-language cookbooks can also have legs.

While its U.S. sales for Spanish-language books are growing, Grupo Nelson is finding even faster growth abroad, says Downs. In fact, sales in the two markets have flipped; U.S. sales, which previously represented 65 percent of its Spanish-language books sales, now comprise 40 percent.

That change was reflected in last fall’s agreement to split distribution for Joel Osteen’s Lo mejor de ti (Become a Better You) with English-language publisher Free Press. Nelson serviced Latin American and Spanish markets, while Free Press kept the U.S. Spanish-language market.

To ratchet up its U.S. Spanish-language sales, Grupo Nelson has begun experimenting with importing books for its Mexican partner Editorial Océano, which handles sales and marketing for its books that are distributed internationally. However, as part of an across-the-board cutback announced earlier this spring, Grupo Nelson will reduce its own Spanish-language book publishing from 65–70 books a year to 50 in 2008.

Getting the goods
While Nelson’s just beginning to dip its toes into the importing waters, Santillana USA has been bringing in hundreds of books a year for nearly four decades. It also publishes 60 titles a year for the U.S. market.

For Silvia Matute, director of the General Books Division, the fact that a growing number of U.S. houses such as Free Press are keeping Spanish-language rights has not been a hurdle. “We have proven that we can move a Spanish-language title better than most American companies,” she says. “Spanish-language titles are not a small department in our company, they are all we do. Agents know this. So we do not have a problem securing world rights.” The drop in the dollar, however, has affected business, forcing Santillana to reduce margins rather than raise prices.

Matute’s not alone in trying to find a work-around in today’s economic climate. “With the euro increasing, it’s difficult for us to bring in books from Spain,” says Carlos Azula, VP of foreign language sales at Random House Spanish (RHS). “We have to be conscious of how much the dollar is this week and how much it is when the book is shipped.” In addition to importing Spanish-language books from a half dozen sources, RHS recommends books for its clients to translate into English for the U.S. market like last fall’s Saving the Americas, the translation of Andrés Oppenheimer’s best-selling Cuentos chinos. Still, Azula concedes that although the market’s growing, RHS is making very little profit. “We have to be patient,” he says. “It’s a long-term investment.”

That investment paid off in double-digit increases last year for wholesalers like Ingram Book Group, which sells to both the institutional and retail markets, says director of merchandising Joanne Hogan. Even so, she notes, “the actual sales do not always correspond with the level of requests.”

By leveraging the Baker & Taylor (B&T) Marketing Services (formerly Advanced Marketing Services, or AMS) warehouse and distribution facility in Mexico City, B&T Español has been able to expand and to satisfy requests from public libraries for authentic Mexican content, says Alexis Romay, manager of national accounts for special collections. In addition to importing books from more than 50 small and medium-sized Mexican publishers, B&T continues to import books from Spain and Latin America.

Going to market
For general independent bookstores with strong Spanish-language sections, the category is also gaining ground. In fact, says Xavier Molea, part-time buyer for McNally Robinson (soon to be renamed McNally Jackson) in New York City, “we ran out of Spanish-language books in December. It was a surprise.” Molea, who buys for academic readers connected to many of the city’s universities, avoids translations of English-language titles. Unlike stores in the South that have an audience for new works from the Caribbean, McNally Robinson does better with South American writers, especially the classics. To bring in Spanish-speaking customers, the store holds several events a month in Spanish and a weekly Spanish conversation group.

Books & Books, which has five locations in Florida and is headquartered in Coral Gables, reaches out to Spanish speakers primarily through events, as many as three or four a month. The stores stock all events titles, including self-published poetry, according to events and marketing coordinator Cristina Nosti. Most sections, while relatively small, contain books on Cuba; best sellers from Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru; cookbooks; classics; and children’s books. At a new store that will open late this year at the Miami International Airport, Spanish-language books will be a significantly larger part of the mix, says Nosti.

Timing is everything
Although simultaneous publication in English and Spanish is still more of an ideal than a reality, B&N’s Schilling says, “I have to give publishers credit, the gap is getting better.” Even best sellers like Harry Potter y las reliquias de la muerte (Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows), she adds, would do better if they came out closer to the English-language release. With the ease of ordering books online, she also wants to stock imported books as soon as they’re available in Spain.

An English-language book’s publication schedule may not have enough room built in to accommodate the two to six months needed for a Spanish translation therefore, Johanna Castillo, Atria Books’ senior editor, tries to tie in with other new releases from the same author. For example, Atria released Jodi Picoult’s Por la vida de mi hermana (My Sister’s Keeper) when the author’s new hardcover novel, Change of Heart, came out in March.

Alternatively, Vintage Español’s Alberti-Pérez says that a one or two-month lag in publication is not necessarily a bad thing. Front-of-store displays and media promotions tied to the English-language pub date can prime Spanish-language readers for the translation. Then, too, she says, “what’s nice about Spanish-language is it backlists very well; you don’t necessarily get a huge pop in the beginning.” Of course, not all waiting pays off as well as that of Suze Orman’s Las mujeres y el dinero (Women and Money), which Alberti-Pérez held for January’s “New Year /New You” season. When that decision was made, there was no way to predict that Orman would do a lengthy appearance on Oprah or on QVC—11 months after the book’s February 2007 English-language pub date.

Recession-proofing español
It’s not only on the distribution side that things need to improve. “We need more bookstores,” says Atria’s Castillo, who acknowledges the challenge of getting people into the stores. Still, she says, finding a Spanish-language book is easier today than it was seven years ago. “It used to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Now any new book published in Spain can be found in the United States.”

Although neither Castillo nor her colleagues are looking for the Spanish-language book market to rival the English-language one, they would like to see more growth. At Borders, that could come from its new online store, which will feature its first online Spanish-language outlet. And there are other signs of growth in children’s, especially among non-Hispanics seeking to raise bilingual kids.

Still, for some, the increases in sales have been disappointing: too slow, too steady. Borders’s Martínez speaks for publishers and booksellers alike when he says, “everyone acknowledges the importance of the market growing much faster.”

Some publishers are doing what they can to stimulate sales, including holding down prices to $15 to $30, even if it means reducing margins, according to one industry observer. And booksellers are upping their Spanish-language events to bring in customers. However, the one factor that can’t be controlled is the economy, and no one wants to have to test just how recession-proof Spanish-language books really are.