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How To Self-Publish An Out Of Print Book In Translation Part 1: Why All Book Authors And Translators Should Care About It

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Extra income potential without writing and translating a book from scratch

Who would not want a bit of extra cash? A lot of authors are retrieving their copyrights of out of print books these days. Up to now, however, these have only been original books, but it can be done with translations as well and I am currently in the process of self-publishing an out of print book as a translator.

Now you might ask yourself, why should I bother if I do not yet have a book in translation? Especially as a successful English language author you could be offered a translation contract by a foreign book publisher out of the blue. And in your excitement you may overlook the fineprint.

Or you might  have tried to get a contract with a foreign publisher for a while and all of a sudden it is finally happening and you are so keen on it that you gladly accept any terms and conditions they offer.

I believe it is important to know your rights from the start to be prepared and make the most of any books you have out there – or to make the most of your translation skills as a translator.

Books in translation can easily go out of print

I said it before and I am saying it again: authors are nowadays expected to do quite a bit of marketing themselves and this is rarely possible for books in translation if the author doesn’t speak the other language.

Foreign publishers will therefore usually do a special promotion for translated books in the beginning, but they cannot keep this up. I saw it myself in Germany when books that I translated were offered in large quantities for a very short time and then they vanished from the shops as fast as they had turned up.

If the author does not have a big name, this can lead to a book being “lost in translation” rather quickly.

Out of print can mean different things, however, depending on the clauses in the contract, and in the age of ebooks and print on demand a publisher could theoretically hold on to the rights forever, even if the book does not sell any copies at all. Would you not rather earn royalties instead?

Author and translator need each other…

In order to self-publish an out of print book, nobody can do it on their own but a translator needs to come to an agreement with the author and vice versa.

In general, translators need to do more than they are used to, above all marketing, at least unless the author is able to speak the language as well, which would be even better. On the other hand, more involvement of the normally invisible translator can also lead to a feeling of emporwerment for them. It has certainly felt like that for me. And who apart from the author knows a book that well and can decide whether it might be worthwhile to give it a try?

Most translators that I know are not even used to earning any royalties at all and this can be a totally new experience.

The German translation is now available at a special price for a short time only, e.g. via this link:

I couldn’t resist using the following Star Trek analogy, especially because I translated so many Star Trek film subtitles in the past…

…to boldly go where no-one has gone before…

It is actually true: I did something new, I couldn’t find any role models for this project, despite extensive research and talking to a many people in the book industry and had to figure everything out by trial and error and. Although it was a lengthy procedure, I was determined to see it through .

Now I am happy to say I am self-publishing the out of print novel “Knowing Sophie – Die Unbekannte” by Brenda Little after coming to an agreement with the original right holders.

I have now learned more about the rights of translators and authors – or in my case the author’s heirs.

Most people and organisations that I asked for advice were encouraging and helpful, but a few experts told me I had to follow certain procedures, which according to them were essential, but they didn’t lead anywhere.

Next time I am going to tell you in detail what worked and what didn’t so that you do not have to repeat my mistakes and also what to pay attention to before signing a contract with a foreign publisher.

 

And if you fancy some inspiration to boldly go into new territory, I have a Star Trek music parody for you.
Warning: Only click on it if you are up for a little silliness 😉

 

 

 Read part 2 of this article: How to self-publish a book in translation – copyright issues

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Celebrating International Translation Day at the British Library 2015: Talking about Self-Publishing as A Panelist

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Last Friday I attended a big event at the British Library to celebrate International Translation Day. It was an inspiring day and I was on the panel of one of the sessions to speak about self-publishing as a translator.

This session was chaired by Stefan Tobler who spoke about starting out more or less as a self-publisher, but then starting his own publishing house with translated literature as a labour of love. He recently published “Southeaster”, a book that was first self-published by the translator and I wrote about this earlier in another blog post.

The other speaker was Rachel Ward, a translator who has worked with self-published authors herself and she mentioned her mostly enjoyable experience. Only a recent experience wasn’t so positive, because the rules how to work together had not been clear enough. And she talked about a problem that is generally not uncommon for those who translate into English: The author had a certain knowledge of English and wanted to interfere a lot to make his or her voice heard.

I personally have never had this problem, because I translate into German and none of the authors I worked with spoke my language. My problem is a different one: the rates for translations into a language other than English are usually low and I live in London, which is an expensive place, therefore I wasn’t able to continue working for German publishing houses when I moved here and I have been looking for new models to make a living.

At some point, I found out that translators have the right to self-publish a book if they hold the translation copyright, and if they do not hold it, they can get it back from the publishing house that published the translation. In addition, they need permission of the original copyright holder. (See another of my articles re. the procedures).

Then I mentioned the platform Babelcube, where self-published authors and translators can find each other to work together. Even though I like the idea, I am not happy about the fact that translators receive fewer royalties when a book becomes more successful. Therefore I would not work with them myself and only recommend the platform for beginners who are desperate to get some experience.

Apart from Amazon, which the majority of self-publishers are using to self-publish a book, there are other platforms like Smashwords which make sure an ebook is published in various other ebook stores. Neither Amazon nor Smashwords require you to pay anything upfront – they simply take a percentage of the royalties.

And someone in the audience asked whether it can hurt a translator and make them look less professional if they do self-published books. To this I replied, not in my experience, I even received an offer from a German publisher who liked my self-published translation, without applying for it and I had to refuse because I cannot affort to work for their rates. My advice is as followos: make sure the result looks professional and it doesn’t matter whether a book is self-published or not. I have even seen quite a few self-published books that looked more professional than certain traditionally published ones!

The way I got into self-publishing myself was through the cooperation with self-published British author and blogger Joanna Penn on a split-royalty basis, because I knew I could learn a lot about the process by doing this and here is a link to an interview she did with me regarding my work.

On the whole, I see a variety of potential ways how translators can earn an income these days:

  • Being paid by a publishing house or self-published author, for example per 1,000 words (the traditional model);
  • receiving a certain flat fee for a translation plus royalties;
  • working on a split-royalty basis;
  • using copyrights of out of print books;
  • especially for English native speakers: finding books that you think are worthwhile to be translated and help to get more books translated into English, not just by pitching to publishing houses, but also by self-publishing;
  • and last but not least: why not write your own books as well and even have them translated by colleagues who translate the other way round or with different language combinations? Whatever your plans and preferences look like: the power of networking can help you in every respect.

I have often heard self-published authors say they needed more than one book to make serious money and I think this can work for translators as well with a mixture of different models, as marketing one book can help to make others visible as well – the more you have out there, the better.

And I would love to see more translators as authors – I am sure, many have books in them – translation is a great preparation for writing after all.

But authors could also be translators, if they have a certain standard of language skills. I am sure some authors would be capable of doing this – provided they have a good edtitor – this would make sure they keep more of their own voice and they do not have to annoy translators by trying to interfere too much.

 

You can read more about the event on my fellow panelist Rachel’s blog here

 

And see also my related article: 5 Reasons Why Self-Publishing Could Help To Get More Books Translated Into English

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Retrieving Translation Copyrights: Important For Both Authors And Translators

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Some authors are now retrieving their copyrights of out of print books and become self-publishers. But what happens to book translations that are no longer in print?

The current situation

If you are an author, you may feel lucky if a foreign publisher is publishing your book in translation. And for me as a translator for German publishing houses, it was always a great feeling once a new book that I had translated came out and I could see piles of them in many bookshops. Most of the time, however, these books disappeared as quickly as they turned up.

Translations are a lot more popular elsewhere than in English-speaking countries, and publishers often like to take on successful foreign books for translation. A book that is already successful as an original minimizes the risk and there is sometimes a big marketing push when the translation first comes out. But bookshops have limited space and there will always be new books that need to be promoted. In addition, foreign authors can’t usually help as much with marketing as domestic authors. Threfore it doesn’t come as a surprise that many of these translated books go out of print after a while. Up to now this has usually meant the translation was lost forever.

Retrieving copyrights

Copyright in handAs I have learned a bit about self-publishing by cooperating with self-published author J.F. Penn, I was curious to find out whether I would be able to self-publish one of the out of print books that I translated in the past.

Book translators normally own the translation copyright by law, but most of the time they have to sign it away to the publishing house, at least in Germany, otherwise they don’t get the job in the first place. Therefore my initial step was to contact the German publisher in order to retrieve my copyright. After a while, they sent me a letter confirming they didn’t intend to publish the book anymore and they returned the translation copyright to me.

I knew that I needed to come to an agreement with the author as well, but she had died, I couldn’t get hold of her heirs or her former agent either and I wasn’t sure how to proceed, so I asked the UK Translators Association for advice. They said I needed to find the original copyright holder in any case, otherwise I could still infringe their rights, even though the author was dead and I have now contacted the original Australian publisher and asked them whether they know about the rights and I am also trying to find other ways to search for the original rights holder.

Self-publishing out of print translated books – a model for the future?

Whatever happens in my case is not the main issue here. The author is dead, which makes everything a bit more complicated than usual, but I would like to point out your options, whether as an author or as a translator.

Let’s bear in mind that it is necessary for the original author (or rights holder) to come to an agreement with the translator, who needs to hold or retrieve the translation copyright, and both should agree on how to split royalties as well.

By the way: Nowadays I would not want to give away any rights for good anymore, only for limited time periods, if at all, because due to ebooks and print on demand, books might theoretically never go out of print and I suspect it will be more difficult to retrieve rights in future.

 

I have contacted many people in the industry, including a large number of translators, and none of them knows of anyone who has used the approach I have mentioned so far, therefore it looks as if this idea is still new – but nobody discouraged me either! Why should we not make use of our rights after all? If you have heard of any case, however, where someone has already done what I am trying to do or if you have any other thoughts on this matter, I would love to hear from you.

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