By Amanda DeMarco COLOGNE: It was “not self-evident” that David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest would enter the German literary world, says Helge Malchow, publisher at Cologne-based Kiepenheuer & Witsch (KiWi). Buchmarkt named Malchow Publisher of the Year in 2005, the same year a Welt Online article called him “the Bismarck of German publishing, its lord and savior.” About 50% of …
Bonus Material: Suggest Your Favorite Brazilian Authors for Translation
By Edward Nawotka When visiting Brazil (read more about Brazilian publishing) it became clear that any mention of Paulo Coelho among book lovers was likely to elicit little more than an eye roll. Brazilians, it seems, have little patience with the fact that Coelho is, for many around the world, the one writer that immediately jumps to mind when one …
German Buch News: Looking at Lübbe’s Staff Translators; Holidays May Add Up to 25% of Total Sales; Introducing Tandoku
By Siobhan O’Leary German publisher Lübbe has had translators on staff since 2007, and Buchreport features an interview with Klaus Kluge, Lübbe’s Sales & Marketing Director, about the merits of having in-house translators. Kluge finds that the stability is a plus, both for the publisher and the translators, who themselves have the security of a guaranteed income, as well as …
Literary Agent Profile: Yasmina Jraissati of RAYA Agency
Based in Lebanon, Yasmina Jraissati founded Raya Agency to represent Arab authors and build more connections between international and Arab publishers.
German Buch News: Amazon Tops Ranking of Germany’s Online Stores; Court Rules for More Pay for Translators
By Siobhan O’Leary The German E-Commerce Center Handel (ECC) — a research and consulting firm focused on e-commerce — has released the results of its ECC Shopmonitor “image ranking” survey of online shops in Germany. As reported in the Boersenblatt, Amazon landed in the top position. The ECC asked 1,000 people representative of internet users to rate online shops on …
From “Cruel Hookah” to “Cruel Hooker”: A Cross-Cultural Conversation in Poetry
By Christopher Merrill IOWA CITY: The book Seven Poets Four Days One Book was an experiment to see what would happen if poets from different lands, languages, and generations tried to write together. The possibilities for failure seemed limitless — which perversely appealed to me. For it has been my experience that the least promising material may sometimes yield the …
What’s the Buzz: E-books Offer Hope for Translations; 40 E-readers Expected
By Hannah Johnson The best of the blogosphere and social media… Over at Three Percent, Chad Post of Open Letter Books has written a four-part essay on e-books and translations. But, anyone lucky enough to be attending this week’s Reykjavík International Literary Festival can see him present it in person. Post argues that, because the majority of translations published in the …
Global Trade Talk: Europeans Balk at Untranslated Google Settlement
By Siobhan O’Leary and Ed Nawotka The Börsenverein, along with numerous other European publishers, associations and international publishers, has put together a statement of objections against the Google Settlement. Buchreport.de summarizes the statement, which notes that the complicated 334-page Settlement was never made available in foreign languages for foreign class members to review. The objecting parties also point out that …
Turkish Publisher Selçuk Altun’s Second Act
By Edward Nawotka ISTANBUL: Selçuk Altun understands what it takes to market a novel. As the former executive chairman of YKY (Yapi Kredi Publications), one of Turkey’s largest and most prestigious publishers, he knew that if he wanted to bring his books to an audience outside Turkey, he’d have to do it on his own. So in 2007 he paid …
The Summer of Stieg: How Larsson Conquered Spain and Latin America
By Adriana V. Lopez MADRID: This past June, I boarded a plane at Madrid’s Barajas Airport bound for Bogotá, Colombia when I noticed several women on the plane with the same book. When you’ve worked in publishing, and by serendipity spot more than one person reading the same book in a public setting, and in one condensed space, it can …