He is the most successful #selfpub writer in Spain. A story that has to be told.

Fernando Trujillo Sanz has had a road like all of the writers, but he envisioned something that few were believed possible. His analysis of the Publishing market un Spain led him to make some “bold” moves. He first thought to translate his book to English before selfpub in Amazon.

In march 2010, he presented his book, a printed book, Juego de Alas. But as expected, due to the financial turmoil, sales were slow. He decided then translate a book to English and send some query letters, some had good response, but nothing concrete. His next step, do the unthinkable, do an experiment. Selfpub in Amazon.

Fernando became, this way, one of the first selfpub spanish writers that has sold books on amazon. And his road has been interesting enough.

He has five novels up for sale. All in Spanish, but also, two translated to English, and two to French, opening his market to more readers.

JA Konrath has told that in order to increase income one has to upload more books, so here is another issue, which I think it also work, translating to other languages.

I have been reading Fernando’s blog from the start. I have to confess that his experience is as I have imagined mine would be. Since I started this blog with the whole intention in becoming a writer, I have imagined that the road selfpubing in Spanish would be slow and tedious, but completely comforting.

I have said it in past post, the Spanish language market, where the publishers from Spain have a big chunk of the market share, is a slow one regarding ebook, mostly because this publishers do not want to sell in this format. I say, thank you! as you do not look to it, selfpub authors are beginning to flourish in this digital world.

I just recently asked Fernando some questions regarding the resolution of this years Madrid Book Fair, where they had forbidden the sale of electronic readers and any thing surrounding this market. He as many as we also thin, view this measure as a retrograde, fearful and un-intelligent measure. He also said that this issues only just slow the change but it does not finish the trend. With this measures Spain, in his view, will be at the end of the electronic market. But I say that not only Spain, but also all of Latin-America, as we depend almost solely of the Spanish Publishing companies.

Fernando is the brave one, the benchmark, so to speak, we have to follow his footsteps and tray to do them better. We, Spanish writers, have to join and help us, so we boost the Spanish ebook market and gain from it.

Also we have to help all the Indie book publishers and bookstores, because printed books, in my opinion will not perish. But the digital market will be the larger market. Fernando has shown us that there is a market for Spanish language books, mainly in the US, but the market is there. I think that it could get better if the readers/tablets get to more people in Latin America and the Spanish language countries. I think that Amazon can do something for this. Amazon can think about a tablet with adds, but adds of the market it is selling to.

If I buy a Kindle and want it delivered to my house in Mexico City I pay, for the cheapr one (139.00) its price and around other 50.00 buck of shipping and international taxes. And with this it still is the cheapest reader here in Mexico, but let’s face it, there are no so much people in Mexico wanting to spend around 2,000 pesos in one reader. So this marvelous electronic device could get here cheaper, but that is another theme for another post.

The main thing is that the Spanish language market for digital books is starting, slow, but it is out there waiting its boost, waiting to surge and demonstrate to the world the importance of the Spanish language Literature. In the meantime lets start filling it with good reads.

For this, thanks Fernando, in showing us the way. We will not let you alone in this road. And for you, english speaking people, go to the amazon store and buy Fernando’s English written books, and help as you do with the english speaking writers.

You can find his Amazon Author Page here.