Looking for comprehensive Spanish-language online bookstore?

Factual Questions
1

Okay, here’s the deal. As I explained in this thread, I’m brushing up on my (pretty abysmal) Spanish again. Got a long way to go, but I know that reading is a wonderful way to improve vocabulary. (It certainly helped me with my English! :wink: ) And I’ve been looking at Amazon.com and BN.com and sure, they’ve got a lot of good stuff and I’ve already ordered a lot of good stuff. But I want more!

What I’m looking for are inexpensive romance novels. Harlequin romances, or similar kinds of books. They’re easy to read (I’ll graduate to the “real” literature later), inexpensive, in abundant supply (or should be), and resell for a decent amount on eBay (I can sell 'em after I’ve read 'em). The problem is, I can only get a limited amount from the USA Harlequin site, and I see that there are many more available on the Spanish language Harlequin site. Many more. Like the “Julia,” “Jazmin” and “Superjazmin” lines of books. But I can’t find them online anywhere. They’re available in Mexico, but not here. At least not where I can find them.

I was hoping that some border state or an area that has a saturated Spanish-speaking population would carry these books for us US customers, but so far I just can’t find any. I do find a few “Julia” and “Jazmin” on Amazon and B&N, but they’re older copies (2002 and 2003) and it doesn’t look like any new ones are being shipped up here.

Does anyone have a source where I could find these? Or other similar books? It’s not terribly urgent (I’m still pretty rusty and I read real slow right now), but it just bugs me that I can’t get access to these books. I’ve gotten so spoiled by being able to get just about anything since I got online.

Any ideas of suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

2

So, no one knows of any bookstores, eh?

Well, I thought I’d update this (and hope that perhaps someone can give me a lead somewhere), and say that I did find a partial workaround. I looked at the Latin American site, copied the titles of some of their newer books, pasted these titles into Amazon.com, and some new books were listed with Amazon. They’re just listed with no cover picture, no description of what kind of book they’re from (from what “line” of books, etc.) or nothing. You have to manually put in each title and search for each book, which can be tedious. (Some books are listed with Amazon, some arent.)

But, at least I know that more new books are being made available in the US. And to be honest, I think I’ll have more than enough of a supply, so I don’t have to worry. :wink:

But this bugs me now. And I’d like to know extend this to any kind of book, not just the Harlequins. Why can’t I buy books from other countries? Isn’t there some International book store, somewhere, that will ship books from other parts of the world (with appropriate shipping fees attached, of course)? It seems so frustrating to see a bunch of books listed on a website, only to realize that you can’t get them shipped to the US. I can get stuff from Amazon.co.uk, why not other places?

3

I’ll ask my Spanish professor and see what she recommends.

Robin

4

That was clearly me and not Doktor Fluff, since he’s not taking Spanish.

Mail sent, BTW.

Robin

5

Thank you, MsRobyn! I look forward to hearing what your teacher has to say! :slight_smile:

6

I’ve used these, and have found the service good.

http://www.libreriamichelena.com/

http://www.paradox.es/

The following is a list of booksellers in Spain.

http://www.bne.es/esp/libes.htm

7

Another link site

http://www.booksfactory.com/booksesp2.htm

8

Ooh, thank you, depocali! I poked around the links you gave me—very interesting! I don’t know if some of them will ship to the US, but I did find one that definitely does: Perubookstore.com. Cool! (I doubt that it has some of the not-yet-available-in-the-US Harlequin romances, but hey—I guess I’ll do okay for Spanish Harlequins for a while. ;))

Keep 'em coming! This is exciting!

9

I heard back from my Spanish professor.

She recommends Books without Borders. She also suggested checking local bookstores because they often have a foreign-language section if you live in an area that has a large Hispanic population.

Robin

10

I know that you said you tried Amazon, but have you specifically looked in their english/spanish section? I buy kids books in spanish and didn’t even realize that they had a specific section. When I was browsing, I’d do a search for ‘spanish’ etc.

Their romance section has 63 pages of books:

The problem is that it mixes up ‘how to books’ along with the romance books.

11

I live in Texas. My local borders has a few shelves of Spanish books, most of which are the classics. So much for that idea! :wink:

12

Wow, you guys are great. :wink: Thank your teacher, MsRobyn, I’ve bookmarked the links. :slight_smile: And thanks to both of you for some excellent suggestions.

Bad News Baboon, yes, I did scour the Romance section at Amazon. There really are a ton of books so I really should be well-fixed for a long time, shouldn’t I? :wink:

The thing that prompted this was the realization that there were a whole lot of books that just weren’t making it to the US. On this page of the Harlequin Latin America site, you’ll see a list of different “lines” of books—Julia, Jazmin, Deseo, and Bianca, etc. These four lines are available in the US (or, at least some of them are, if you know how to hunt). But the other lines of books listed here (Sensaciones, Superbianca, Serie Oro, Harlequin Internacional, etc.) are not available here (at least not that I know of), and that’s what’s bugging me.

It isn’t super-high on my list of things, since there should be plenty for me to choose from in first four lines of books, (and since finding that Amazon does carry more than I at first anticipated). So, I’m definitely more satisfied, thanks also to all your suggestions and links. But when my reading skills improve, there are definitely books from these other lines on the Latin American Harlequin site—they’ve got books by some pretty decent (semi-mainstream) authors there.

I recently bought some books from a lady on eBay. She’s from Mexico, now lives in Arizona, and devours Harlequins (she enjoys them and they help keep her Spanish fresh). She reads an average one of these things a day. So, even if I don’t ever have time to read from all four of these lines of books (I definitely intend to branch out to other literature too), I am sure that since she is such a fast reader, she’d LOVE to get her hands on all of the books that are available down in Mexico (like the Harlequin Internacional line, etc.). But so far I’ve found no source for them here in the US, but I perhaps some of the pages of links that were provided before might have something. (I haven’t had time to scour through them all . . . )

Anyway, you’ve been most helpful and these links are definitly going to help me with Spanish books in general! Thanks so much!

13

You could try Schoenhof’s, they have quite a selection of foreign books in many languages. That way, you can avoid huge shipping charges. Their Spanish section is divided into Regional Spanish, Spanish of the Americas, and Spain. And then there are subdivisions like children’s books, light reading, etc.

They have over 1700 children’s books in Spanish, just for one example.

14

Casa del Libro is a huge book store in Madrid and they ship world wide AFAIK.

15

Wow! More bookmarks for me!

Thanks again! :slight_smile: