Last fall brought unprecedented experimentation with simultaneous English and Spanish hardcover editions of works by big name Latino and Latin American writers, such as Sandra Cisneros, Isabel Allende and Univision's TV news anchor Jorge Ramos. Spearheaded by HarperCollins's two year-old Latino imprint, Rayo, as well as Knopf and Vintage Español, this fresh approach marks notable progress in distribution and market awareness since the early 1990s, when Spanish titles typically received initial printings of only 5,000 paperbacks.
One of last year's most anticipated books was Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo, the second novel by the Mexican-American author of The House on Mango Street (1991), which has ranked as Vintage's #1 paperback backlist title for much of the last decade. With Caramelo, Knopf opted for simultaneous English and Spanish hardcover editions, instead of publishing the novel first in its original English and later in a paperback Spanish translation through Vintage Español, the standard practice for many of the house's Latino authors. The risk seems to have paid off: the Spanish hardcover has so far netted 13,000 copies since September, a respectable number for a translation, and a number that's sure to grow now that Caramelo has become the Today Show's book club pick for March. Meanwhile, the English hardcover edition of Caramelo has sold close to 90,000 copies, according to Knopf senior v-p Paul Bogaards.
Given that Vintage's Spanish translation of The House on Mango Street has sold 115,000 copies since its 1994 publication, and 20,000 copies in 2002 alone, Vintage publisher Anne Messitte expects Caramelo's paperback sales to be even more robust next September. "So much of the sales volume comes from re-orders. These authors are not day-one bestsellers in sales, but are steady and often build over a period of time," commented Messitte.
One of the most notable precedents to the Caramelo experiment was Chilean author Isabel Allende's 1999 novel, La Hija de la Fortuna (Daughter of Fortune). Because that book was also highly anticipated, HarperCollins published it first in a Spanish hardcover edition, followed six months later by the English translation. The novel later became a bestseller, in both English and Spanish, when Oprah selected it for her book club in 2000.
Based on Allende's previous success, Harper's Rayo imprint last fall released 60,000 hardcover copies of the English translation of Allende's latest young adult novel, The City of the Beasts, along with 42,000 hardcover copies of La ciudad de las bestias. For three months after its October release, the Spanish edition of Allende's novel ranked at #2 on the bestseller list compiled by Críticas, a sister publication to PW that focuses on Spanish books in the U.S. market.
As far as recent Spanish-language hardcovers go, the clear winner is Gabriel García Márquez's long-awaited memoir, Vivir para contarla (Dec.). The Knopf book sold out of its first printing of 50,000 copies in less than a month, while competing with a hardcover edition imported from Spain and three trade paperback editions from Latin America. The English hardcover edition, Living to Tell the Tale, will be released in a projected 300,000-copy first printing next November, alongside Vintage's Spanish paperback edition.
According to Borders's Spanish-language buyer Aron Feit, Vivir para contarla, which is 600 pages long and retails for $25, generated more than 25% of the chain's Spanish hardcover sales since it was released. But Feit acknowledged that Spanish hardcovers are viable only for well-established authors, like García Márquez and Allende, or media personalities such as Jorge Ramos and the radio talk show host known as El Cucuy de la Mañana, who both had hardcovers on Rayo's list last fall. "Paperbacks are still the majority of our sales in the Spanish market," Feit said, noting that sales tend to drop off significantly for books priced over $20. Hardcovers amounted to "roughly a quarter of all the Spanish books we sold in the U.S. in February—Puerto Rico excluded," he added.
Last fall, Barnes & Noble joined the bilingual bandwagon with a bold experiment. From September to December, the chain's Discover Great New Writer's Program featured the English translation of Colombian author Laura Restrepo's novel The Dark Bride (Ecco) alongside the Spanish edition of the novel, La novia oscura (Rayo), the program's first Spanish title. The move flew in the face of conventional publishing wisdom, because the Spanish edition was a $14 trade paperback that could have siphoned away sales of the $24.95 hardcover English edition. But in the end, both books came out ahead.
"It seems the side by side display fueled sales of copies for both editions," said program director Jill Lamar, noting that the English hardcover of The Dark Bride outsold the other titles in the program at the time. Sales at Barnes & Noble also helped Restrepo's Spanish-language paperback shoot up Críticas's list of Spanish-language bestsellers in October and November, where it reached a high at #10. Lamar said she is open to featuring more dual editions, since sales of the Spanish-language edition "exceeded" the chain's expectations.
"Simultaneous publishing depends on market awareness of an author," explained Vintage publisher Messitte, who has been committed to the Spanish-language market for a decade. "And that is something that happens best when you have an English and Spanish edition along with media and sales in both languages. When both markets cross pollinate—then there's success."
