Just last August 29th, Amazon opened its Mexican branch at www.amazon.com.mx
While Amazon worked for more than 8 months with Mexican publishers and was able to bring in big names in books in Spanish such as Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska or Gabriel Vargas, the author of the celebrated Mexican comic “La Familia Burrón,” Amazon was able to launch only 70 thousand books in Spanish, out of an initial catalogue of 2 million titles. That is less than 5% their inventory for a country whose only national language is Spanish.
The message here is clear: The market is in need of eBooks in Spanish and I believe that today, given the circumstances, a title in Spanish may do better than its original in English, just because of the size of the competition in each market.
According to the National Chamber of the Mexican Publishing Industry (Caniem), in 2011 only 1,709 eBooks were published.
Still, Amazon is making a huge commitment in the Mexican market: Their site today is entirely dedicated to eBooks and nothing else; not only that, but they started with 1,000 titles at a special price of $ 0.68 dollars and are still giving away 1,500 eBooks available for free at their site.
Amazon has also come to an agreement with the most prestigious book store in Mexico, Gandhi, to sell their Kindles.
How big can this Mexican market be, anyway? The general manager of PRISA Ediciones Norte thinks the Mexican market today is valued at 300 million dollars.
Today could be a good time to start looking into Amazon Mexico, before every other author rushes there.