From a time to this part, a few years ago, different cloud reading platforms have been appearing that go far beyond the purchase of an ebook by downloading an Epub file.
At first, each platform was specialized in a type of service; there were cloud audiobook platforms and cloud reading platforms, but it was rare—except for the eternal exception, Amazon—for someone to offer everything. The current trend, once it has been understood that the reader is multiformat and multisport, is to combine as many services as possible, so it is increasingly common to find, in the same provider, audiobooks in the cloud, cloud books and even purchase by download.
The list can be very long and, without aiming to be exhaustive, but to illustrate the variety and quality of these services, we can find 24symbols, Scribd, Nubico, Storytel, Bookmate, Audioteka, Audible, Spotify, Google Play Books, Kobo, Apple and an increasingly long etcetera. Nor should we forget such important public services as the Digital Public Library, whose fund and benefits grow year after year.
Audiobooking is still very expensive to produce. Although Artificial Intelligence won’t take long to do what a human narrator does today for a fraction of the cost, right now the vast majority of publishers cannot aspire to produce their own audiobooks. Instead, the only thing a publisher needs so that their books can be read in the cloud—for example, on platforms like 24symbols or Nubico—is to have an Epub file, the same one it already produces to market its ebooks by download on platforms such as Amazon, Kobo, BajaLibros, PerúEbooks or Casa del Libro.
That’s where we end up with some digital asymmetry from the Spanish-speaking publishing environment. For different reasons, where we will not now enter, unlike the English edition, the Spanish edition does not enjoy global platforms that, more or less symmetrically, cover the entire linguistic domain. Thus, today, an Australian publisher does not have much difficulty in marketing his books to his Australian readers on platforms easily accessible to them while, of course, accessing the rest of the world. Amazon has marketplaces in Australia (whose population is significantly larger than Chile’s) and, in addition, in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, the most important English-speaking markets, totaling about 450 million people (for some 500 million natives across language proficienity).
In Spanish, on the other hand, it has only marketplaces in Mexico and Spain, with 175 million speakers (for about 480 million natives). This asymmetry is important in Amazon’s case, because it is an absolute world leader—only in Germany, China, and Japan has rivals capable of opposing it—and because its sales are very important even in those countries where it does not have marketplaces. Other providers do not suffer from this problem because they were born global and are not tied to a physical infrastructure, such as 24symbols or Storytel, among many others.
The important thing, in any case, is that Spanish-speaking readers have more and more options. If a few years ago it was still perceived as very important that Amazon opened marketplaces in many Spanish-speaking markets, today it is no longer so important. Firstly, because through digital distributors (Bookwire, Libranda), the ebooks of any Spanish-language publisher can be on any platform in the world, also in many public digital libraries; secondly because, thanks to the ease of access to reading in the cloud, it is enough to have a cell phone or tablet with an Internet connection to be able to read books.
That’s a scenario where no matter how small the publisher or how remote it is: if you have an Internet connection, you can sell books worldwide in any business format.
The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not reflectnecessarily has the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
