US Hispanic book market spanish complex demographic latino

By Liz Spikol

The Ethnicity Issue

In addition to other challenges in reaching the Hispanic market, publishers must also consider this: The Hispanic population of 50 million people in the U.S. has a diversity problem—it’s too diverse. So much so, in fact, that the Census Bureau recently completed its largest quantitative research effort ever to contend with the fact that so many Hispanics choose “some other race” on Census forms. That’s after the person filling out the form has agreed they’re of “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin,” and after they’ve been confronted with a list of choices including “Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano”; “Puerto Rican”; “Cuban”; and “Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on.” If the Census Bureau needs to say “and so on,” you can imagine how tricky this is.

Aside from the 3.7 million residents of Puerto Rico, and the 1.5 million Puerto Ricans who live on the mainland, the majority of the country’s Hispanics (65 percent) come from Mexico. The next largest groups are Cubans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Hondurans, Ecuadorians and Peruvians. And of course there are people from other countries, as well.

Unfortunately for marketers, people from these many Spanish-speaking countries don’t automatically unite under a tidy banner once they arrive in the U.S.; sometimes the differences between them—linguistic, cultural, political—are thrown into greater relief. There are prejudices between groups around race, class, assimilation and language. In fact, most Hispanics don’t care for labels like Hispanic or Latino. In a Pew Research Center study released in April 2012 (“When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity”), most people of Hispanic descent in the U.S. identified themselves by their country of origin rather than a pan-ethnic label. Yet there was one commonality: Spanish. Eighty-two percent of Latino adults speak it, and 95 percent say future generations should speak it, as well.

—Liz Spikol

You walk into the bookstore, past the tables of "Books for This Month's Holiday," and find your way to the Foreign Language section. Bring up your bébé in French; speak Chinese like a Tiger Mom; have a conversation in Russian that would warm the cockles of Putin's heart—it's all here. And if you already know a foreign language—Spanish, say—you'll also find novels and self-help books right next to "500 Spanish Verbs."

The juxtaposition of grammar and fiction is a little odd, but the titles—at least in Spanish—are anything but. "The Hunger Games," Fifty Shades of Everything, the latest by Rhonda Byrnes. There's even a golden oldie: "Cómo ganar amigos e influir sobre las personas" by Dale Carnegie. Pick up the Spanish translation of Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol," and a worn phone card falls from between the pages—a card once used to call home (Mexico? Colombia? Guatemala?)—now used as a public bookmark. Nestled between the Dan Brown and the Dale Carnegie, there's a thick book by someone whose name actually sounds Spanish: Paco Ignacio Taíbo II. No phone card falls from between its pages.

Such a bookstore trip is a tangible encounter with a difficult truth for publishers: The Hispanic market is a tough nut to crack. Both Vintage Español, which published the Dale Carnegie, and Rayo, which published the Taíbo, know this well.

The challenges are many: the cultural diversity in the population; the different levels of acculturation to the U.S.; the varied linguistic abilities, ranging from the old woman who doesn't speak a word of English to her bilingual son to his English-speaking daughter who takes French classes in school.

Increasingly, the question of digital literacy becomes an important factor, as well—though not easily parsed, given that Hispanics utilize technology differently than the general population.

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