Santillana to offer Spanish language e-Books to european readers through Amazon's Kindle store

PRISA Ediciones (Santillana's general-interest publishing arm) has today announced an agreement with Amazon to make available to European Kindle customers around 1,000 titles from publishers Alfaguara, Aguilar, Taurus, Suma and Alfaguara Infantil y Juvenil from over 20 Spanish-speaking countries. The titles will be available for download at Kindle stores in the UK, Germany,  and France (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de y Amazon.fr) from November 9. Before the end of this year Santillana is set to add another 400 titles to the online catalog, and over the course of 2012 the total number of currently available titles is expected to reach over 2,500. Since September, Santillana has been selling e-books in Amazon's digital store in the U.S..

Santillana and PRISA Ediciones are confident that this agreement represents crucial steps in the revitalization of the digital book market in Spain and Latin America. "For us, this deal will make available on Kindle devices hundreds of e-books from renowned authors," says Fernando Esteves, Global General Manager of PRISA Ediciones. "In the US, the sale of digital content now accounts for 20% or more of income of the big publishers. Although in Spain the figures are still modest, we are convinced that there will be huge growth in 2012. "

PRISA's Ediciones' catalog includes works of fiction, essays, food, travel and current affairs by leading national and international writers, such as the  latest work by Javier Marías (Los enamoramientos), Kate Morton, the Australian author who has caused a sensation in the literary world with her novels The Forgotten Garden and The House of Riverton, books by Manuel Rivas, Manuel Vicent and José Saramago, and the latest hit from Arturo Pérez-Reverte, El Puente de los Asesinos.

The agreement with Amazon will allow European readers access to Spanish-language works from the different labels in the Prisa Ediciones/Santillana stable that until now were available only in their respective regional markets, chiefly Latin America. This deal signals the company's firm commitment to making its catalog available to readers on all platforms and devices and thus guarantee the best possible reading experience.

"One of the main priorities for Kindle is to increase the offer and range of ebooks for our clients in all languages," said Gordon Willoughby, director of Kindle in Europe. "We already offer our customers in 100 countries, tens of thousands of non-English-language titles and last September we launched our first Kindle in Spanish. Now, with Santillana, we are excited to increase our offer of Spanish-language titles to Kindle readers across Europe. "