What’s Going on in the Mexican E-Book Market?

[charlesatan]

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012...e-book-market/

– The first time I showed my Kindle to a bookseller in downtown Tijuana (he sells English and Spanish titles on the sidewalk) he had never heard of it, but immediately started thinking out loud. My favorite of his conclusions: “So paper books are going to be tossed away in the USA and I can get them cheaper to sell here.”

– I published a graphic book by a Tijuana artist. I was busily formatting it in my usual “Kindle uber alles” way when he brought me to understand that nobody in Mexico owns Kindles. But a lot of Mexicans, especially those with the taste and income to be readers, own iPads or other tablets. So I went to “ePub/SmashWords-friendly” formatting priorities. It’s kind of like ereading here has skipped ahead a generation. They never owned eInk readers and have been ready for color and apps all along. And the kids are dying to see it spread more to phones and glasses. A further twist, I had intended his “graphic short story” to be a $0.99 ebook loss-leader from the start, but ended up producing a paper version for $4.95 so I could get them to reviewers. He bought a dozen of them and sold them for an average of $8.95 in a matter of hours and ordered thirty more. Several local comix shops snapped them up to retail for twice what they sell for on amazon.com.

– Speaking of phones and Amazon, there is no reliable mail service in Mexico. So anything downloadable has more field than anything physical. This is very common throughout the free world. Furthermore, TelMex, the once-monopoly phone company (owned by Carlos Slim, often cited as the world’s richest individual, and sometimes as the most corrupt) was so unworkable that cell phones ate up the market. Any taco stand will have a cell phone. But there are few ebooks in Spanish for cell phones. Mail order is useless, bookstores are close to useless most places…but everybody has a phone.

– Only 3 percent of Mexicans read novels. A print run of 5,000 is impressive for national publishers. This is not uncommon in Central America and much of South Asia. But Mexicans who do read literature are very proud readers used to paying twice American prices from similarly corrupt, government-interfered publishers. The percentage of people in that readership with tablets is very, very high. Most coffee houses in Tijuana will have at least two pads visible at any time.

[Giggleton]

The secondhand/piracy market has been and will most likely always be huge.

[HarryT]

And Mexico, of course, enjoys the longest copyright term in the world (an eye-watering life plus 100 years), hence many books which are in the public domain elsewhere aren't PD in Mexico.

[apbschmitz]

While living in Bolivia recently I was surprised by the resourcefulness of hackers there. They had busted through the security in high-end software packages such as Adobe Creative Suite, which they sold for the equivalent of $8. Can't speak for Mexico, but I suspect that anyone offering a digital product in Bolivia will soon be competing with pirates offering deeply discounted versions in the ubiquitous markets.

[cjr72]

I was talking to a friend of a friend a while back who lives in Mexico. He uses his visits to the USA to buy gadgets because the selection in Mexico for electronics in general is terrible. I asked him if he looked into having the stuff shipped to Mexico and he told me that Mexican customs will steal it and if you complain they blame it on the shipper.