Foreign rights and translations

Bushrat said:

Does anyone know if it is of any advantage as a bilingual author to offer your book in two languages to agents or publishers? Would you get paid for basically doing one translation?

I would think the advantage would be that the agent or publisher could send out the ms to foreign markets, or else the author could query two seperate markets (but then couldn't sign for world rights anymore).

Just wondering if it's worth the effort to translate your own book.

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It's something to discuss at the time you are offered representation by the agent. But it is unlikely to entice an agent since the agent's primary concern would be selling the book in the primary market.

I would think the same reasoning applies to editors, but perhaps some who have more experience querying editors directly may disagree with me and will weigh in.

~suki

I know a few established writers who have foreign rights agents who sell rights off individually, but I think starting off you'll usually be expected to sell world rights to your home market publisher. And the rights guys there will probably be good at selling off the translation rights

That said, if you sold world rights to a publisher, it would probably be worth letting the rights people know you could do the translation for ... whatever language you could do the translation for. If you sold those rights, the foreign publisher might then hire you to do your own translation. (You'd then have to get proof from your tax authority that you're a resident in Canada to avoid double taxation, as that money would not be filtered through your home publisher.)

I don't know that it would be worth doing right now, though.

I could, of course, be wrong. If you look directly above at the post I deleted you'll see I can't even spell redundant.

unless you are silmulateously trying to sell the books in two different countries, then no. I don't see there being any advantage.

If your publisher is international then they may translate it all in house, if they decide to market it in other countries.

Otherwise another publisher may buy the foriegn rights, this is often handled through your agent, although some publishers have 'partner' publishers in other countries.

No advantage that I can see.