Data on Spanish ebook publishing

Checking these things in part because a post on Passive Guy, in part for something around some friends of mine.

The more I look into it, the more I'm convinced that Spanish ebook sales suck. Which is the shorthand version for this. Now, I've looked into several Spanish ebook distributors:

• One took me longer to find its Glorious Future presentation that it would have taken me to register a user and upload its first book on Amazon-KDP. I can't recall their terms, or even if they published them.
• One is a strange variant of a vanity press, print only, with not all that undecent terms. It still requires you to buy some of your own books, at a discount, and says nothing about royalties, but it's not exclusive, for example. Wacky.
• A third one allows for 10-15% of print royalties (depending on distribution channel) and a whopping 35% of ebook royalties.
• Two best ones, by far, are one linked to both a bookstore chain and the main Spanish publisher. You already know my thoughts on that one. And a new entry in the Spanish market (but I bought an ebbok three years ago from them and it was a nightmare of DRM and OS-specific). Those offer 30-70 and 20-80 terms, respectively, although the seconf one discounts HW printing first. While that's natural, it doesn't allow you to check the price of the printed manuscript without going through the registration process. I think fnac has similar terms.

Amazon, KDP and CreateSpace win all those hands down. In ebooks, big boys offer the best terms, hands down. For mid-numbers, there are nice printers in Spain that can match CreateSpace. For low orders, not really.

Amazon might be the Evil Overlord, but it is a tempting one.

Take care.