ABSTRACT
Spanish Americans were highly enthusiastic to import useful books from the most 'civilized' European countries. However, for British and French publishers and booksellers of the 1820s the business of books in that region was an uncertain enterprise. The geographic distance, the ignorance of the tastes of the Spanish American reading public, and the difficulty and high cost of transatlantic and inland communications seemed rather daunting, even if the promise of a big new market was so attractive. Even as experienced an entrepreneur as Rudolph Ackermann was unsure about how this adventure would turn out, as he wrote to a German friend when he launched his first Spanish magazine:
I am about publishing a Spanish Magazine principally calculated for South America. How far I shall gain by it is a Question. I prepare myself even to a loss; the circulation can be but small and difficult. I shall however for certain serve England by making the Americans better acquainted with us, and ultimately my name known in that rich but uncultivated country.2
