The number of US librarians was up on previous events, to meet growing supply from publishers looking to get their Spanish-language content in front of American readers.

It comes as a surprise to many to learn that the USA has more Spanish-speakers than Spain. It’s got more English-speakers than the UK, too.

But whereas UK publishers fully understand the US is a huge market to be engaging with, few publishers give the USA a second thought when it comes to Spanish-language books.

Per Edward Nawotka‘s post in PW this week, that is changing, especially among US librarians, who understand there is huge demand for Spanish-language books in the USA.

FIL Guadalajara pulled in 857,000 visitors this year, and among them the number of US librarians was up on previous events, to meet growing supply from publishers looking to get their Spanish-language content in front of American readers.

Nawotka has a full report over at PW. A few salient excerpts here to give the flavour.

“In June, Princeton University Press announced a partnership with Planeta, the largest privately held Spanish-language publishing company, which reopened its U.S. office in 2021 under the direction of Christobal Pera.”

“This year’s presentations included sharing our experience revitalizing backlist titles,” said PUP director Christie Henry. PUP took six employees to this year’s FIL, where it also had a stand. “It was magical,” she added. “Time together at FIL with staff and people at Planeta gave us a chance to plan for the future of this series, as well as other licenses and partnerships.”

“For this edition of the FIL, the European Union was the guest of honor, with representatives from more than two dozen countries appearing. FIL organizers felt it was a great way to expose the Mexican public to a broad range of contemporary European authors and publishing, and in turn to expose a broad range of Europeans to the FIL. Benas Berantas, founder of the Book Smugglers Literary Agency in Vilnius, Lithuania, remarked, “I have met many new publishers and editors from Iberoamerica who I haven’t met before in Bologna or Frankfurt.”

Much more from Nawotka in the full post at PW.