Amazon's Kindle ebook store is expanding to Mexico, and it's bringing along some big names to kick things off. Among the store's more than 2 million ebooks will be over 70,000 Spanish-language titles, including books from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Paulo Coelho. Coelho's contribution to the store is particularly notable: he's self-publishing into the store using Kindle Direct Publishing, which is also being launched in Mexico today, to offer titles of his including The Alchemist, Eleven Minutes, and several others.
While opening to a new market may be a natural business decision, Amazon says that launching the Kindle Store in Mexico is actually a particularly important service to offer. "The vast majority of Mexicans do not have access to a bookstore in their town," Pedro Huerta, Kindle's Latin American content director, says in a statement. The store is also launching with over 1,500 free Spanish-language ebooks, which should give local readers plenty of content with which they can start filling their Kindles.