By Emily Williams

On Friday, the last day of Spain’s LIBER book fair, a rumor emerged on finance website Cinco Días that set the halls abuzzing: internet giant Amazon was finally preparing to enter the Spanish market through the acquisition of BuyVIP.com, an ecommerce company based in Madrid, with operations in Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Portugal, Poland and the Netherlands. (To add a nice bookish twist, one of the company shareholders is none other than Bertelsmann.)  In the days since, BuyVIP has acknowledged that it is in talks with Amazon but as of today no deal has been concluded.

According to ​Spanish newspaper El Mundo, BuyVIP.com, an online buying club for clothes, shoes and accessories that offers its 6 million members 30-70% off retail prices, expects to close 2010 with €140 million in turnover, after gross income grew by 70% in the first half of the year.

While Amazon already operates in Germany and Austria, the acquisition could give the US giant a foothold in five countries where it has yet to set up a local presence. In Spain, where the publishing industry has just begun to seriously ramp up its e-book business, the​ news was a source of both concern and excitement. Spanish publishers have made a big show of trying to integrate booksellers into the digital supply chain and wonder what the impact could be if a player the size of Amazon were to muscle its way in and grab a share of the still emerging e-book market. On the other hand, the ecommerce link in the chain has arguably been the weakest in connecting Spanish readers with the new medium of e-books, and a serious online partner could allow the new digital distributor Libranda to grow while giving its partner publishers the collective voice needed to counterbalance Amazon’s online heft.