Our Books in a Foreign Language – Why Not?

• September 17, 2020
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With globalization (which started officially but was happening forever, in my opinion, with the establishment of the UN) the cultural trade took on a life of its own along with economic trade. Currently in almost every country of the world (could be all) a second language is not just preferred it is many times needed! What this tells you in the world of books is that a translation of your book can sell not just in that language’s country but in many others, especially with our current internet technology. So why not tap into those markets ourselves instead of selling our rights? In my own case for example, I focused on my own background, and book’s setting to determine what language I wanted to translate my book to.  I translated “Innocent War” first in Italian to target the audience from the story’s setting and topic and am working on a Spanish one to target my South American background in Venezuela where I was born and raised. But there were other things I needed to consider:

·       I decided to publish the book only in digital format to market it in Italy and Italian crowd in the US, however I should have done some research on the format preference of the audience I was targeting before committing to only one format.

·       I should have also found out which social media platform was the most popular for my target market and base my marketing on that one.

·       I also believe, it would have gone better for me if I had localized a publishing platform from Italy to publish the Italian translation. As I found out, Mondadori, which is the biggest traditional publisher in Italy also has a Print on Demand platform. I would have probably sold more books if I had used them and went for paperbacks through them.

No one knows everything on their first time around, but as we try new things we learn and get better. Having your book available in different languages is a plus not only if you want to market them yourselves directly to readers, but also if you want to sell to foreign publishers…who knows maybe it will become a best seller in another country before it takes in the U.S.!