Translation Rights - DIY or use Overseas Publisher?

If you hire a translator, do you have a plan for evaluating the quality of the translation? Do you have a plan to translate your marketing materials, which may need adjustment to meet different norms in different parts of the world? These are some issues I've heard mentioned by authors discussing the two paths you're considering.

I have a number of foreign publishers handling my books. All handled through my agent, thank dog. You (OP) sound like the type of person who likes to jump in up to both elbows and get dirty. Great for you. For me, not so much.

Yeah, I'll see less per book sale than I would if I handled it all myself. On the other hand, I wouldn't have handled it myself. At all. So anything I get is free money. Also, any time I would have spent dealing with foreign rights & publishing and whatever (assuming I did at all) would be time not spent writing. That's the real cost of DIY, even if you aren't actually writing a cheque. How much is your time worth? What is the opportunity cost of beating your forehead repeatedly on the brick wall of administrivia?

You are completely free to make your own decisions, of course, but mine can best be described in two words: screw that!

Arpeggio said:

Recently got an inquiry from an overseas publisher regarding the translation rights of one of my titles. This in particular is something I know little about. As far as I know they would translate the title, distribute / sell / market it, take their % and give me a % of those sales (at least that's the only way I would possibly enter into any sort of agreement like that).

It's good to know one of my books is deemed worthy of this, however I can't see big enough advantages with this compared to how I was originally planning to approach translation, which was to arrange / pay for translation myself then distribute myself.

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One of my lovely agent friends once told me that she aims to make at least twenty foreign and subsidiary rights deals for each of her author-clients' books, so that by the time they have a few books out they get a cheque from her at least once a week. And that's for trade publishers, who usually only issue royalty cheques once or twice a year.

I doubt very much that writers could get that level of rights sales themselves.

I also doubt very much that writers could manage foreign rights as well as publishers can: for example, it's near to impossible to ensure that translations are done competently, and that they hold to the spirit of the book, if you have no experience in the area.

If this is a competent publisher then ask for the contract and see if you can get a review of it from someone like the SoA. Ask the publisher what level of sales they routinely achieve for books like yours, and what level of sales they expect for yours. Ask what marketing spend they plan on committing to the book then get that added to the contract.

Factors I've considered as follows:

Market reach - The world gets smaller with technology, with somewhere like Vearsa (who I was with for eBooks but might return to) most of my titles were in most foreign retailers anyway. Amazon has sites for .de .es .it and so on. Is the reach to a few more language specific retailers really worth it? (if that is even the case beyond what I can get on my own anyway).

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Your book might have been with most foreign retailers with Vearsa, but did they organise translations for you?

Assuming this publisher intends to translate your book into Klingon, do you have any experience in the Klingon market? Do you know what marketing and promotional activities are effective there?

Copyright - I keep them 100% if I do it myself.

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You'll keep 100% of the copyright if you work with this publisher, too. You'll only be licensing them the rights to sell a specific translation of your book, not giving them any copyrights at all.

Arms length - The following link is just something I found while looking around and nothing to do with me, but I notice the chart of territories with 13 different Publisher / Agents. I'd rather not deal with and study the contracts for many different agents, it might be simpler if it was just myself for all languages I choose. http://www.darleyanderson.com/authors/kimberly-willis

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It's so funny that you included this link, out of all others.

Kim's children went to the same junior school as mine.

I didn't know she was represented by Darley Anderson. That's so good. She works really hard, and deserves success.

Arms length - I'd rather get the sales reports myself, than someone else get them then send me them. A publisher is just another stage between my books and my income, what advantage can they offer that I would need to do that?

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What advantage can they give you? All the usual ones that good trade publishers bring.

Profit per sale - I get the full cut if I do it myself.

The only advantage I can see is that I wouldn't have to arrange or translation myself, which I was planning on doing anyway.

I understand how that approach might work for a larger publisher who might have someone dedicated to this kind of thing? but ironically as a one man band it might be easier to do it all myself as I was planning to. Studying 13 contracts might about as much work and vigilance as finding a good translators myself.

Have I missed any factors? Anyone have experience with translation? be it either sharing the rights through an overseas publisher or doing it yourself as I intended to. I'd be interested to know. I hope this is the right place on the forum to post this as far as I could tell.

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It looks like your mind is already made up: but I do worry that you're launching yourself into this without realising how much a good trade publisher can do for its authors.

I used to work on foreign rights sales (years ago!) and there's a huge amount of work involved. Not only do you need to pay for a good translator, you then need to work with a good copy editor in that language, you need to have promotional materials made which are appropriate for the country you're selling into (if you look at the differences in book jackets between US and UK editions you'll see some of the issues here), you'll need to deal with foreign payments and taxes... there's a lot to be done.

If you're determined to do it yourself then I do wish you luck: but don't turn down the offer before finding out all about it first. You might be surprised by how much they're offering. And remember that if they do well with your first book they might want subsequent books, which could turn into a nice little income stream for you without you having to do anything more than sign the contracts.