By Ricardo Costa In 2013, Brazil will be the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and it’s not too early to consider what the country has to offer. With 220 million people and $2.5 billion in book sales for 2009, Brazil, has a book industry that is booming, one producing more titles –- with more efficiency –- and …
The American Gentleman: Roger Straus in Frankfurt
At first publisher Roger Straus was reticent to come to Germany for a book fair, but once he did, the legendary publisher made friends, struck deals, and left a lasting legacy. By Boris Kachka Roger W. Straus, Jr., the exuberant founder of Farrar, Straus & Giroux who died in 2004, carried himself like a born leader, a man who kept …
Want More Rights Deals and Translations? Try Taking Editors and Publishers Overseas
By Chad Post TURIN: “Let me tell you something: the U.S. market is closed to Italian books,” said Italian literary agent Marco Vigevani on a panel about translation at the Turin International Book Fair last month. “It may sound crazy,” he continued, “but I want you to face the facts. Yes, it used to be different. There were editors like …
Who is Your Favorite Foreign Rights Rep?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story profiles Graham Cook who recently won the Rights Professional of the Year Award, sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair, at the UK Bookseller Industry Awards. Of course, that competition was limited to the UK. So tell us, who is your favorite foreign rights rep from around the world? Tell us a little bit about …
Beyond “Blokey” DIY: UK Rights Pro of the Year Graham Cook on Expanding Opportunities
By Liz Bury LONDON: In the eight years that Graham Cook has sold rights for Haynes he’s seen it transform from being “the car manual specialist” into a publisher with much broader reach. In its early days Haynes produced books about how to deconstruct and reassemble cars. Its range of customers was limited to car book publishers. Since branching into …
Selling Amanda Abroad: How Transmedia Storytelling Challenges Foreign Publishers, Licensees
By Siobhan O’Leary Translating and adapting a book to a foreign market can be a demanding enough task, but when it comes to transmedia storytelling, the process of “translating” a story world and attracting a following can pose even greater challenges — even if a book or series is already a proven success in its original language. It’s not so …
How Will Transmedia Storytelling Change Narrative?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story discusses The Amanda Project and the challenges posed by translating it into foreign languages and transferring it into foreign markets. The challenges are not so much issues of translation, but of transference. How do you take a relatively open-platform, Web-based story, that is itself organic and changing, and transfer it into another culture and …
The Translation Gap: Why More Foreign Writers Aren’t Published in America
By Emily Williams NEW YORK: Parts one, two and three of my series on scouting looked at American efforts to sell American books overseas. Today, this fourth and final installment of the series looks at the other side of the equation and brings us to a question most scouts run into sooner or later, often posed by one of their …
Is the Cliche of the Culturally Insulated American a Myth?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead article by Emily Williams looks at the question of why so few foreign writers make it into print in the US. It’s by know become well known that approximately 3% of books published in the US are translations (and I would guess that number would be significantly smaller as soon as you factor in self-published …
Inside the Secret World of Literary Scouts (Part III)
By Emily Williams In Part I we looked at the essentials of how scouting works and in Part II we discussed the changes scouting is going through. Today we look at what the future might hold for scouts. The close professional ties scouts develop with their clients, sometimes over decades, are key to the role those scouts play in helping …