You can thank Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, that epic tale of old men and hottie sidekicks chasing murderous albino monks around Italy, and cheestastic self-help cheese fest / marketing ploy The Secret for a new surge in Spanish-language book publishing.

The recent explosive success of El Secreto, the Spanish translation of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, opened eyes. After its June release, the self-help book almost immediately hit the top spot on the charts of Críticas magazine — the equivalent of Publishers Weekly for Spanish books.

Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books has printed more than 245,000 copies in anticipation of a mega-hit by Spanish-language standards.

Aída Bardales, editor of Críticas, said The Da Vinci Code phenomenon made publishers realize Hispanic readers in the United States don’t live in a publicity vacuum.

What, you didn’t read either of these? What are you, poor?

South Florida has long been considered a core market for Spanish-language publishers in the U.S. because of its large, affluent and literate Hispanic population. Most of the major Spain-based publishing houses have established U.S. headquarters in Miami. Some have been here for more than three decades.

We’ll save the few meager pesos we have left and buy, like, 40s and magic beans instead of spending all our dough at the airport bookshop, thanks.

Publishers, bookstores offer more in translation [The Miami Herald]