Target audiences and their impact on writing

[James]

Confined to home for a few days I was catching up on my reading, and was struck to find that one of my favourite author, living in Wales had published in US English.
Scouring the internet I find numerous tracts expounding the theory that speakers on one side of the Atlantic fail to relate to English written in the standard from the other side.

So this begs the question: do we create two versions of a book with Americanisms and spelling to maximise potential sales on that continent?

[Cee]

James:

I'm struggling to write even just one version - and that in the Queen's own. ;)

[Rob]

I don't think too many Americans struggled with Harry Potter - or did the publishers produce US versions of those books, too?

[Andrew]

I heard the American editors changed the word "skip" to "dumpster" and did indeed change everything to the American spellings - http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questi...

Personally I have no problem reading American books with all their own spellings and terms for things that we don't use. It's a part of consuming things from another culture. I think it's good to keep the spellings and terms British. Many Americans are insightful and cultured (although some would disagree) and no doubt manage to decipher our UK English with relative ease and maybe even enjoy the slight differences in language.

[James]

Thanks guys!