Lectorum Plans E-Bookstore To Open This Fall

by Aída Bardales -- Críticas, 8/15/2008 9:00:00 AM

Almost a year after closing its eponymous bookstore in New York City because of a rent increase, Spanish-language book distributor Lectorum, a subsidiary of Scholastic, has announced it is developing online bookstore LibreriaLectorum.com, likely to launch in November.

Teresa Mlawer, president of Lectorum, told Críticas that the idea for an e-bookstore emerged long before the actual store closed. “People from all over the country used to call the bookstore to order books,” she said, adding that a large part of the bookstore’s actual sales were made over the phone or by mail.

LibreriaLectorum.com will be different from other online booksellers, Mlawer asserted, in that it will be geared solely to the Spanish-speaking community. “[The goal is to] serve Hispanics in every corner of the country,” said Mlawer. Unlike the existing Lectorum.com, which is geared primarily to educators and librarians and is an extension of Lectorum Publications as distributor, the online bookstore will be solely in Spanish and for the general public.

The web site, which is tentatively scheduled to launch this November, will offer the same variety of Spanish-language books, more than 25,000 titles, previously found via the Lectorum bookstore. Mlawer said that the e-bookstore will ultimately include a forum for readers to discuss books, as well as to communicate with authors. “We haven’t discarded the idea of [adding] music and DVDs in the future,” she added.

Additionally, this past month Mlawer hired Ximena Diego, Críticas’s former children’s reviews editor since 2006, to join Scholastic as web content producer. Mlawer said Diego’s experience in publishing and her bilingual ability were key to ensuring the web site’s quality.