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Translating into other Languages ?
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Michael
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Aug 09, 2016 06:52PM
Does anyone have their novels translated into other languages ? If you do, which languages and does it increase sales to justify the costs ?
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I know people, coming from the opposite direction, i.e. from other language into English, like Ramon Somoza, for example. If it helps, maybe he'd be willing to share his experience. Don't know how much he's on GR these days.Denise wrote that she thought about translating one of her books into German, but decided against it. Here is the dicussion, if you want to have a look:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I heard about someone having lukewarm response from English-speaking readership, but becoming huge in Japan. Can't remember the details, but probably Google can do wonders in finding it.
Although I don't have personal experience to back it up, unless you find some publishing house in the target market, ready to undertake the promotion, then most chances you'd be tackling the same problem as with original language - to give the book sufficient exposure to take off. Might happen, might not.
At the back of my mind, I also have these thoughts of going Russian (not sure censorship would let it pass) and/or Hebrew, but wait on it till better times -:)
Thank you for the advice and link. I will check them out. I'm able to track the IP addresses coming to my website so its easy to analyze the data as to where potential readers are coming from. There's a total of 29 countries represented, but 70% of the traffic is coming from the US, UK and Canada.
Since my site is only in English at this point, Im not surprised most of the top traffic countries are all English speaking. I will eventually translate the website to other languages. But even now, since the book mostly occurs in Italy, a good 20% of my traffic is coming from Italy.
So I am debating translating it into Italian and releasing it same day as the English version. It will probably cost me about $1500 for the translation. At $2.99 my break even point is approximately 300 sales on Amazon.
It makes a lot of sense to have the book translated into the language of the setting. Not sure there is a certain advantage in simultaneous release. If your English version is ready, you might as well launch it, see how it fares and add Italian version a little later.Not sure, I got the math right. With 3$ price and if you don't use retailers, but sell directly from your site, then you need 500 books sold to break even, no? If you use Amazon, which withholds 30% , then it's 750, right?
These are not astronomic quantities, but I remember reading somewhere that most books on Amazon never sell beyond 500 pieces. Something to consider.
On the other hand, it all depends. If these amounts aren't that significant for you, you might as well go a little bigger and the way you think best: translated and with some launching promotion and all..
I see some serious and smart PR does bring results...
My math was off... lol Thank you... Yes, it is actually 750 sales at $2 per ebook after Amazon's cut.
I could actually see this novel doing better in Italy than in English speaking countries. The Vatican and the Pope are main elements. Italians love a good story that pulls back the curtain of one of their most venerated institutions.
