{"id":279356,"date":"2010-08-16T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2010\/08\/16\/publishing-perspectives-editorial-redux\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:31:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:31:54","slug":"publishing-perspectives-editorial-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2010\/08\/16\/publishing-perspectives-editorial-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishing Perspectives Editorial (Redux)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because of how this was broken up over two weeks, and because I’m still recovering from my vacation in Ohio with my family, I thought I’d rerun the editorial I wrote for<\/em> Publishing Perspectives. I’ll stick with the two-part format, since that pretty much makes sense, so here’s Part One:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need is a great translated beach book. Something that will appeal to tons of people and convince them that it\u2019s safe to come in the water,\u201d a friend said to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is true . . .\u201d I instantly imagined someone sitting in the sand reading Zone<\/em>, the 517-page, one-sentence novel that Open Letter is publishing this fall, and which has become my summer read. In my mind, this imaginary reader looked frustrated, disgusted, like she\u2019d never read a French book again. No, like she\u2019d never travel to France again.<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, so anyone with a little common sense knows that our books aren\u2019t really of the \u201cbeach read\u201d variety. But as someone who endlessly advocates for the publication, promotion, and appreciation of international literature, this statement my friend made really got me thinking: maybe all of us promoting translations need to get more commercial. More in touch with the common reader. Maybe everyone\u2019s right, the translations that get published here are too erudite, too specialized to survive in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

Swiping a line from one of our board members, I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d be able to identify a bestseller if the damn thing sold a million copies all over my head, but there is something to the argument that a breakthrough book could help change the marketplace for literature in translation. If only it were that easy . . .<\/p>\n

Before getting too far into theories of audience development, let\u2019s back up a bit. I\u2019m willing to bet everyone subscribing to Publishing Perspectives knows full well that the situation regarding literature in translation in the United States is a little bit fucked. We export the hell out of our authors, watching them get translated into dozens of languages, but we rarely publish a novel from Sweden much less Croatia, Bulgaria, Paraguay.<\/p>\n

And we all know the two most common reasons cited for this literary isolationism: translations cost too much and don\u2019t sell very well.<\/p>\n

Correcting Supply vs. Creating Demand<\/b><\/p>\n

Believing in those two premises \u2014 and these premises may well be bullshit, but let\u2019s let that slide for another day\u2019s editorial \u2014 has led to a large focus on correcting the supply-side of the situation, especially through translation grants designed to offset part of the publisher\u2019s production costs. From a publisher\u2019s perspective (no pun intended), it\u2019s much easier to look at your balance sheet and find ways of offsetting your costs that are immediate, guaranteed, and relatively easy to acquire. And in the greater scheme of things, filling out a two-page application form and sending along a sample translation is much quicker and more reliable than trying to make a book\u2019s budget work by identifying readers and increasing sales.<\/p>\n

In addition to translation costs, occasionally a foreign government will also subsidize rights payments, and in very rare instances will help pay part of the printing bill. These grants are wonderful, are necessary, are the reason that certain presses stay alive. And the fact that most of these monies go to translators \u2014 one of the most woefully underpaid links in the translation publishing chain \u2014 is fantastic.<\/p>\n

But except under very specific conditions \u2014 a book tour, a particular event \u2014 these monies are never directed at readers. Or to be more precise, at the idea of building and creating a readership.<\/p>\n

It could be argued, or rather, I would personally argue, that by changing the demand-side of the international literature equation, the entire translation balance could be upended. If publishers believed the readership for literature in translation was equal to that for any other book they might publish, their arguments against doing these books start to fall apart. At least a little bit. And maybe more translations get published, and sell better than expected, resulting in more translations, and for once we have a positive feedback loop in relation to foreign literature.<\/p>\n

So if the end goal is to increase readership instead of focusing on how to pay production costs, the question becomes, \u201chow do we get people interested in these books?\u201d And we\u2019re back at the beach read possibility . . .<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard a number of people promote the idea that if a few translations really \u201ctook off\u201d then we\u2019d see an overall increase in the number of international titles making their way to our shores. Which is absolutely true. What\u2019s the over\/under on Scandinavian crime novels coming out next year that are the \u201cnext Steig Larsson\u201d? Fifty? One hundred? I\u2019m sure every publishing house in Manhattan would overpay by a million dollars to find the next \u201cGirl with a something something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also absolutely true that readers of Larsson will be much more willing to give another Nordic thriller a try. It\u2019s not like international crime is an unpopular genre, but it\u2019s pretty likely that baseline sales for the genre will spike over the next couple years.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no denying that the beach read argument has validity in terms of generating a larger audience and change the minds of some publishing people. It most definitely does. And that\u2019s great. But I think it\u2019s just part of the picture and carries with it a few cautions and needs to be supplemented with other approaches. More on that in Part Two . . . <\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because of how this was broken up over two weeks, and because I’m still recovering from my vacation in Ohio with my family, I thought I’d rerun the editorial I wrote for Publishing Perspectives. I’ll stick with the two-part format, since that pretty much makes sense, so here’s Part One: \u201cWhat we need is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[34616,34606,24256],"class_list":["post-279356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-building-an-audience-for-translations","tag-editorial","tag-publishing-perspectives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347646,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279356\/revisions\/347646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}