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Spanish Railway Launches "Library Train"

Some time back I posted on an airport ebook library program. Today I found a similar program in Spain, where one of the national railways has partnered with a publishing house.

The Catalan Government Railways has teamed up with Random House Mondadori, the Spanish subsidiary of Random House, to let passengers read the first chapter of selected titles.

In the first phase of the program, the railroad has added signs with QR codes to trains running in Baix Llobregat. Passengers  can scan the codes and they’ll be directed to a RH website where they’ll be able to read from one of the 40 titles. The selection includes works by Spanish language authors like Ildefonso Falcones, Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as translated works by David Grossman, John Le Carré, Umberto Eco, and others. The railway isn’t passing up the chance to promote books printed in Catalan, the language native to that region of Spain. At least some of the titles will available in that language, as well as Spanish.

This program is being launched as part of the  National Reading Plan, and it will run for 2 months  and be repeated 3 times a year until 2016. There are plans to include other publishers the next time this program is run.

It’s a great idea, but I have to wonder why they do not offer public domain titles? That way they could give away the entire book, not just the first chapter.

via, via

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Comments


Mike Cane April 19, 2012 um 7:05 pm

*snort* You found
https://twitter.com/#!/mikecane/status/192938856834805760


Xyzzy April 20, 2012 um 12:06 am

If Spain is remotely like the USA in reading preferences & copyright length, I’m not surprised that they wouldn’t bother offering public domain novels… My experience has been that most people believe that books written prior to the 1950s (or possibly later) are the sort of drab lit they would’ve slogged through for school, and have no interest in repeating the exercise.

Nate Hoffelder April 20, 2012 um 6:50 am

The situation there is worse. While the US only switched to a life+70 rule in 1978, Spain has had it (I think) their first copyright law was passed in the 1800s.

Arantxa Mellado April 20, 2012 um 12:35 pm

The Spanish current copyright law was passed in 1987 and according to it, works switch to public domain 70 years after the author’s death


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