Y Lolfa, a small printer and publisher of Welsh Language books based near Aberystwyth, is leading a campaign to bring Welsh language reading material to the Amazon Kindle range of ebook readers. Up to now, Welsh hasn’t been an option for those looking to distribute books over the Amazon Kindle store.

Some publishers have got round this by listing their books as English, such as Euron Griffith’s ‘Dyn Pob Un’. However, Y Lolfa and other Welsh publishers don’t feel this is suitable . They believe that Amazon could help strengthen the number Welsh speakers, which has fallen from 582,00 to 562,000 since 2001, by specifically listing Welsh language books.

Garmon Gruffudd, managing director, said: “Last year we published Welsh language books on the Kindle but we listed them as English books because Welsh wasn’t a supported language.

“However this year they have refused to put them up through this route because they say that they are in an unrecognised language.”

Gruffudd has published more than 60 titles on Kindle, but has ruled out adding any more.

“It is ironic that our existing Welsh language books are there but the situation now is we can’t put any new Welsh language books on the Kindle,” he said.

“With books available in languages such as Galician, Catalan and Basque, the situation does seem bizarre.

“The alphabet is the same and there aren’t any technical reasons why they shouldn’t be able to support the Welsh language.

“They also recently accepted a book written in Cornish, although this followed a petition to get the book published on Kindle and it was listed as an English book.”

With Welsh available on other ebook readers, such as the Kobo Reader, and a petition to be set up Amazon have issued the following statement. “We are working on adding more languages through our Kindle Direct Publishing portal all the time and Welsh is one that we hope to support in the future.”

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