Alejandro Katz

You can say one thing about Argentina’s political leadership: it’s not afraid to court controversy and alienate its colleagues in Spain. In April, Christina Fernandez’s government moved to nationalize the nation’s largest oil and gas company, YPF SA, which is majority held by a Spanish firm. Now, the past few months have drawn loud and vocal cries from the publishing industry after moves by the government have led to the sever restriction of importation of books from Spain and abroad. The issue is as cultural as it is political or economic — and highly polarizing. Some influential publishing personalities have dubbed the move “fascistic,” others see it — as the government has defended itself — as a pragmatic move to preserve and protect the country’s intellectual assets.

In the respected journal Letras Libres, publisher Alejandro Katz editorializes about the ongoing controversy.

Katz founder and director of Katz Editores, and highly regarded in Argentine publishing circles (he was recently selected as one of the top 50 people in Spanish-language publishing) — notes that (and I’m working from my own rough translation): ”Argentina produces about 12.5% ​​of the titles that are published in Spanish, which means that any restrictions to prevent the introduction of books to Argentine readers limits their access to 87.5% of titles published each year in our language — not to mention in other languages.”

He continues by explaining that the government agenda is setting up clear dichotomies and hierarchies: the prioritizing of manual labor over intellectual capital, of the local over the foreign. It is, he writes: “It is ideology that remains convinced that [Henry] Ford-like production lines are more genuine and important goods produced by education, knowledge and creativity.”

The government may be promoting its actions under the banner of promoting “cultural sovereignty” but Katz concludes any action that can view the “free circulation of books as dangerous” is simply “sad.”

On May 1, the Publishers Association (PA) of the UK released their Statistics Yearbook 2011, a report on the performance of the UK publishing market. According to the Yearbook, digital sales — specifically e-books, audio book downloads and online subscriptions — accounted for 8% of total invoices sales of books in 2011, up from 5% over 2010.

Consumer e-book sales increased 366% in 2011 over the previous year. However, total book sales in 2011, digital and print, dropped by 2% to £3.2 billion. The average book price also dropped by 1.3%.

In the academic and professional segments, digital products account for 13% of total book revenues. Book sales to schools grew by 6.1% to £271 million.

The report also notes that exports generated 41% of UK publishers’ revenue. Exports are particularly strong in East and South Asia, Central and South America — Brazil in particular.

“Across fiction, non-fiction, children’s and academic books, the story of the year is a decline in physical sales almost being compensated for by a strong performance in digital,” said PA Chief Executive Richard Mollet, in a prepared statement.

“That said,” Mollet continues, “physical books remain the format of choice for the vast majority of British readers, underlining the continued importance of a strong ‘high street’ sector.”

The PA collects data for the Yearbook from 2,240 publishers representing 100% of UK publisher sales, and 70% of total UK book sales

The report includes book publishing statistics, top publishing companies in China, and new digital initiatives in the country. Several articles also outline initiatives of Chinese publishers and GAPP to develop international cooperation with publishers and technology companies abroad. You’ll also find information about the bestselling authors and books from the major Chinese publishing companies.

Download the report on China’s publishing industry:
Part 1 (PDF, 15.6 MB)
Part 2 (PDF, 12.7 MB)
Part 3 (PDF, 9.7 MB)

By Edward Nawotka

Richard Mollet, Chief Executive, Publishers Association, UK

To many Europeans, it’s one of the most vexing issues of the new digital age: Why should readers be required to pay a higher tax rate on e-books than they do on print books? Well, because the European Union says they should. The EU’s VAT directive allows countries to set a standard rate of VAT that may be higher than 15%, but can’t go lower — save for some cases, such as books, provided they have a “physical means of support” — which most lawyers interpret as print. As a result, VAT on print books throughout much of the EU is significantly lower than on e-books.

“We pay 20% VAT on e-books, but in the UK we have the rather unusual position in Europe where we have 0% on print books,” points out Richard Mollet, Chief Executive of the UK Publishers Association. “But we feel that because they deliver the same cultural and social benefits, both print and e-books should be treated the same.”

Naturally, he doesn’t mean raising VAT on print books. “The e-book rate should come down, ideally.”

France and Luxembourg have already done exactly that. Luxembourg has a 3% VAT on both print and digital books, allowing Amazon and Apple—which have based their European operations in the country — to offer the lowest rate of VAT in Europe to their customers, much to the ire of competitors across the community.

“So far, the British government have disagreed with France and Luxembourg,” says Mollet, “but as our Booksellers Association points out, you should either follow suit or go to the EU and say there are infractions.”

The PA would like to see the language of the VAT directive changed so both e-books and audiobooks attract the same VAT rate as print. “It’s a stark anomaly,” says Moffet. “We simply want the tax law to reflect the equanimity of cultural good.”

While he says that “considering the explosion of e-books across the UK and elsewhere, you can’t really say it’s stifling growth,” he does acknowledge that it may have an impact in the future. And it most certainly has an impact on innovation, if only for the moment: “If you’re in your garage and come up with a fantastic new way to sell books online, you’ll move to Luxembourg before going into business,” he admits. “Of course, that too is likely to change, as in 2015, the VAT law changes to that of the buyer’s home country and not the seller’s,” meaning Apple and Amazon will lose that competitive advantage. “But three years in the e-book market is a lifetime.”

Mollet says that as far as the UK is concerned the 20% additional VAT one pays on digital books is roughly equivalent to the production and distribution costs associated with print titles. “So if you remove that impediment, you might see prices come down.”

Ultimately, though, Mollet doesn’t believe that reducing the VAT will lead directly to increased digital sales. “The next big kicker isn’t to do with e-book prices, but with device prices. We’re at somewhere around 8-10% revenue coming from digital on the trade side. You’ve got a small population out there with Kindles and iPads buying books quite happily. A change in VAT isn’t going to make them buy 20% more books, because it won’t give them 20% more time. It’s only once device prices drop that you’ll see the practice of e-book buying become more widespread.”

The European Commission is currently reviewing VAT and is likely to offer suggested changes by the end of 2013.

By Daniel Kalder

“The UK is not an easy market,” says Marysia Juszczakiewicz, founder and owner of Hong Kong-based Peony Literary Agency. “There is not necessarily a history of translation, unlike in other European countries. Plus there’s such a rich history of home grown product, people don’t feel they need translated writing quite as much.”

And yet, she says, in the last five years or so, the profile of Chinese writing has blossomed: “Generally there’s huge interest in China, both culturally and politically ­— and there are a number of factors for this. People are trying to understand China, and they’re trying to do that through its culture.”

Juszczakiewicz cites some of her own authors as examples of China’s rising profile: Su Tong’s The Madwoman on the Bridge won the Man Asian Literary Prize, while Christian Bale was so impressed by Yan Geling’s The Flowers of War that he agreed to star in the film adaptation, directed by Zhang Yimou. Another author in Juszczakiewicz’s stable, race car driver and blogger (with 300 million readers) Han Han was covered in the New Yorker and New York Times in 2011 even though his work will not be available in English until later this year: “The interest in him, from the UK to the US to Brazil, is phenomenal.”

Julia Lovell, translator and lecturer at Birkbeck College, definitely sees an upsurge in interest in Chinese books, but adds a few qualifications: “I feel that more time and patience is required for publishers to showcase to English-language readers the full complexity and diversity of contemporary Chinese writing. And there is still far more interest in economic and political than in cultural stories. I would argue that until pretty recently, Anglophone editors have also searched for a non-literary USP for Chinese titles: Usually sex or politics, and ideally both. What is arguably being overlooked is a large body of mainland Chinese work that, while artistically accomplished, fails to win over editorial boards in London or New York because it lacks this controversial USP.”

And yet, the interest in Chinese writing is sufficiently strong that even the perennially challenged short story market is benefiting, says Ra Page, founder and managing editor of short story specialists Comma Press, who will release the anthology Shi Cheng, Short Stories from China in April. As with Juszczakiewicz and Lovell, he stresses the diversity, unexpectedness and cultural discovery possible from reading Chinese writers:

“I hope that these stories give British readers a glimpse into a completely new and unfamiliar culture going through some fairly seismic changes — but that they also enable readers to pick out experiences that aren’t actually so unfamiliar after all. Sometimes the best way to describe something is, of course, to describe something else — either through metaphor, allegory, or just straight fiction. That’s what these stories do. They give us a snapshot of China at this very moment in time, by taking a side-step onto it. They freeze-frame it for us in high definition.”

Could it be, though, that the “boom” is a bubble that could pop?

Lovell is philosophical about the upsurge in interest from publishers: “Yes, it is a bit easier. But what remains as hard, as it always was, is sifting through the mass of material that exists, finding the best work, persuading a publisher with clout to take it, and creating a strong voice for the translation. So from that point of view, my life hasn’t really become much easier, and it wouldn’t make much difference to me if the current publishing trend turns out to be a bubble or not. I don’t mind, though; the difficulty of finding good work is one of the challenges and satisfactions of the job.”

By Roger Tagholm

Left to right: Joe Pickering, Julia Lampam, Tom Hall

Broadly speaking, the thrust of this year’s social media session at the fair “Twitter to Woo?” could be summed up in two words: “Get involved.” That involvement should not just be with what might be termed the two essentials – Twitter and Facebook – but should take in experimentation with Tumblr, Pinternet, Google Plus and any other new channel that might emerge.

The unified message from speakers Joe Pickering at Penguin (although he is about to become a Publicity Director of Random House), Julia Lampan at Wiley and Tom Hall at Lonely Planet, was that this is a world in which you cannot afford not to be engaged.

Other takeaways from a very well attended session included: If you want to build up followers on Twitter, start following people yourself. Don’t be mean about other publishers – you may have to work for them one day. Be sharp and funny. Don’t just recommend your own products. And reply – don’t be a company “that goes dark”, as Hall put it. “Nothing looks worse than a search for your company leading to a dormant site, with no activity on it,” said the Lonely Planet Online Director. “If your company is in the spotlight, people are going to use social media to see how you are responding. You need to listen and respond.”

Pickering noted the number of new sites out there and said: “Try them. See what works. We all try cooking lots of things before we find out what works best for us – it can be the same with social media. And remember – with social media, its final use can be something very different from the original intention. Twitter was invented to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ but its use has long changed from that.”

Lampan recommended different conversations on different platforms and added that she gets annoyed when she sees Twitter hashtags on Facebook “because it means they’ve taken a shortcut”.

Pickering had advice for anyone in the audience currently seeking a job in publishing. “Make sure your Twitter bio is clear. It’s not good having some obscure haiku-esque offering. People like me, who are employers, won’t notice it.”

The last word should perhaps go to Hall. “No one ‘owns’ social media in your company,” he said. “But it needs to be incorporated across everything you do. You are not really in control and it won’t be perfect. It should be like a punk rock song. No one listens to the end – just make a big splash and then move on.”

By Olivia Snaije

At the Translating Minority Languages event during the London Book Fair 2012, the four speakers — Christopher Meredith, Gabriel Rosenstock, Clive Boutle, Sampurna Chattarji and the chair, Daniel Hahn of the British Centre for Literary Translation — were a lively bunch with humor, poetry and much to say between them. The event had a slightly zany feel to it given that the languages the participants represented were restricted to the British Isles and to Bengali, which is spoken by 85 million people in India alone — hardly a minority language.

That said, Christopher Meredith, a writer and translator of Welsh said he felt that the situation in Wales was a microcosm of the way languages co-exist in the world. Of 3.5 million people in Wales, there are only 5-600,000 Welsh speakers—this gives one an insight into the relationship of a big language living next door to a small one; said Meredith.

Clive Boutle, of Francis Boutle Publishers specializes in books translated from minority languages in Europe, and is the foremost publisher of Cornish. Recent anthologies include Galician, Breton and Norman (from the Channel Islands) literature, he also publishes books in Manx, spoken on the Isle of Man. Most translations from these languages are possible as in the case of Cornish and Manx, because he knows exactly who his audience is, or thanks to European government support, although Boutle said he didn’t quite understand Europe’s business model when it comes to translations of lengthy novels. France represents a “hole in the middle of Europe,” he added, because it does not recognize minority languages.

Gabriel Rosenstock is a poet who translates back and forth between English and Irish; he has translated poetry into Irish using English as a bridge language. He raised the point that translations into smaller languages are essential to ensure that these language cultures don’t become too inward looking and narrow their vision. The life of a literary language, said Rosenstock, depends a lot on inward and outward translations.

Sampurna Chattarji, a writer, poet and translator said she fell into translation by chance, when she retranslated Sukumar Ray’s “Gibberish” for children. She now translates many languages such as Irish or Swiss German into Bengali using English as a bridge language, which she doesn’t see as a problem as long as one is very conscientious and can ideally work with closely with the author. She believes that if there is a translation problem with a bridge language, it can be fixed. “The essential component is dialogue, being picky and going back and forth. Of course if the author is dead you have to rely on your good conscience,” said Chattarji.

Meredith has both translated using English as a bridge language from Greek into Welsh, for example, but also spoke about the experience of having his own writing translated. He said that bridge translation seems counterintuitive, but that with the right care and attentiveness, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. Speaking as an author, he said, you have to relinquish something of your work. “It goes out there and leads its own life…strange things will happen to your texts.”

The Literature Prize – the new award spearheaded by agent Andrew Kidd at Aitken Alexander – has stepped closer to fruition, despite the unwelcome news from the UK government regarding charitable giving.

Andrew Kidd, the man behind The Literature Prize

“Last week I had had the most encouraging meeting yet with a possible benefactor,” Kidd says, “but I must admit that it hasn’t been helped by the government putting a cap on charitable donations. However, we’ve begun the process of assembling the 50 writers and critics who will form the academy from which the six judges will be drawn. Our hope is that the first prize will take place in spring 2013, around the time of the London Book Fair.”

Unlike many, Kidd is not overly interested in any conversations involving the three ‘A’ words – no prizes for guessing what these are – preferring instead to focus on the books. “We’ve had a very good year. I’ve just sold a very good first novel to Ravi Mirchandani at Atlantic. It’s a fearless, stunningly ambitious debut called The Crystal Bowl by an Hawaiian-American writer now living in New York called Hanya Yanagihara. It’s about a disgraced scientist who has found the elixir for eternal life which has a fatal catch to it.”

By Olivia Snaije

British and American editors and a translator got together yesterday at the London Book Fair’s Literary Translation Centre to discuss how certain languages are chosen and others are excluded for literature in translation into English.

Boyd Tonkin, the literary editor of The Independent and a judge for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize began by saying that all cultural institutions proceed on a basis of selection and therefore exclusion, although an editor’s role is vital.

Shaun Whiteside, who translates fiction into English from German, French, Italian and Dutch, said he just translated a 700-page novel about a translator going mad. He was intrigued by the idea of a language gatekeeping process because it is complex and there is a commercial side to it. “Publishers want to find a ready audience, there’s also an idea of creating an audience for smaller work.”

Translated fiction in the UK, however, is no longer thought of something as desperately highbrow, he added.

Barbara Epler, publisher of New Directions, of which more than half of the books are in translation, said she felt more like a “road opener” than a gatekeeper. Even though 97% of what is published in the US is in English, it’s a good time for small publishers bringing out works in translation, the New Yorker is now publishing translated fiction and reviewers are open as well. Getting the translations to sell is the biggest problem. Epler added that unfortunately the model in the US when a big publishing house brings out a translated book is to never advertise it as such.

Susan Harris, the editorial director of Words Without Borders said it was important to keep in mind who is minding the gate and who’s keeping it locked or unlocked, which is dependent on publicity, but it can also be those who bring translated work to the attention of the publishers — translators, and foreign rights directors — who are all gatekeepers along the process.

Tonkin believes that this process needs more scrutiny than it gets: editors can go to book fairs abroad and find that what they are being offered by publishers is a fairly stereotypical idea of what will be successful. “There’s a sort of self-censorship going on. Some of their most interesting writers are not being brought to American or British publishers because foreign publishers don’t think they will be sale-able.”

All agreed that the success of Roberto Bolaño’s books or the Scandinavian crime fiction craze has done much to make literary fiction seem less mysterious to readers, and social media and on line book groups have helped publicize fiction that is off the beaten track.

That said, a good translation is the starting point and is essential to journalists, critics and editors who cannot read in foreign languages. Tonkin mentioned how tantalizing it was to travel and meet Korean or Arabic language writers that he cannot read, and that unfortunately sometimes the sample chapter that an editor has hastily cobbled together will be so bad that it will put anyone off looking any further.

The subject of AmazonCrossing’s translation program was brought up, and Tonkin said it was difficult to know whether to hiss or applaud it. Their concern was that editing and a quality control needed to be firmly put in place as the potential for bad translations is huge and can be very dangerous for the field.

Publishers should think of buying a translation as if it were an artwork for their collection, said Epler. “It’s an incredible opportunity for the English speaking world.”

Tonkin added that readers who are curious about a wide range of books, would be curious about a wide range of translated books as well. “People resistant to translation are resistant to good books.”

The British Council’s Young Creative Entrepreneur Publishing winners presented market insights and innovative business models at the the London Book Fair at a seminar called “The Future of International Publishing Start-Ups.” Arthur Attwell from South Africa, Gökçesu Tamer from Turkey, Ganesh Ram from India and Jason Ren from China spoke about challenges, transformations and solutions concerning publishing in their respective countries.

Left to right: Arthur Attwell, Gökçesu Tamer, Ganesh Ram and Jason Ren

All have similar problems with how to cater to a large, young population, although each country has its specificities. In South Africa, Attwell described the problem of accessibility to books in rural areas. His Capetown-based company, Paperight, has brokered a deal between copy shops and publishers in order to diminish the illegal photocopying that is a constant problem for publishers. Attwell has set up a system whereby copy shops can legally print books by paying a fee; publishers (and Paperight) earn revenue from the copy shops. Attwell also spoke about open license textbooks that can be downloaded for free and illustrated as an example the success of the Siyavula company, which partnered with the South African government to provide grade 10 mathematics and science books for schools.

Developing books for mobile phones is also a growing trend, something that Ganesh Ram, who founded eMahatva Technologie is grappling with making Indian languages available on mobile phones, leading to accessibility to e-books. With his company Fublish, part of eMahatva, he intends to tap into a market of 900 million mobile phone users who have access to the Internet but have not necessarily ever used a computer. In a country that has 21 official languages, only 5% of these phones have native language capability. Ram is developing language technology and has started to store open domain books on memory cards that can be delivered to users.

As part of the marketing team at Istanbul publisher Dogan Kitap, Gökçesu Tamer says piracy and distribution are two problems that stand out in Turkey. In order to distribute in the eastern area of Anatolia, a company called Prefix provides online distribution to bookshops providing a model for more rural areas. Bookshops can order online the books they need and are hooked up to a banking system. Another area that is developing rapidly — up 400% last year — is the e-book market. Kitapyum is a new platform that is producing applications that will be compatible with a variety of devices; a B2B model that has been developed is a Samsung e-book application for Samsung Turkey.

Tamer’s company is betting on an efficient use of social media to interact with young readers to find out what they want to read. Dex Kitap is an imprint for young adult books that focuses on fantasy, mystery, horror and love. Young people in Turkey need to belong to a community, said Tamer, and books can be considered cool, people want to share their stories. Dex Kitab works on talking to young adults online before publishing their books.

Jason Ren runs a magazine called Little Thing in China, testing a new business model in the industry. Like Tamer, Little Thing provides a community for its customers with a high-quality lifestyle magazine, but also concept shops with designer products and online shopping. Ren uses online gateways and provides apps for iPhone and Android. Atwell and Tamer use EPUB and PDF formats, while Ram uses Java applications for e-books but said standards are changing rapidly.

Attwell’s bridge between copy shops and publishers was extremely interesting to the others, while certain forms of payment now possible in India, such as pre-paid cards or companies specialized in handling payments are needed in South Africa, said Attwell. All agreed with a Chinese proverb quoted by Ram: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”