Julie Broad walks through whether indie authors should translate their books. She covers three key questions: can you speak the target language, can you afford translation and layout changes, and is there actual demand there. For most self-published authors, licensing rights to an overseas publisher works better than going it alone.
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Have you written a nonfiction book and been asked if you can or will be putting it into other languages? Living in Los Angeles, this question comes up a lot because there's a huge Spanish speaking community here. My process for helping my clients think this through might be exactly what you need. So if you're wondering if you should get your book translated, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad from Book Launchers. Welcome. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that grows your brand, builds your business and makes you money. Our superpower is caring more about you and your book than any other company as we support you to succeed. And the best part, you keep all the rights and royalties and have full control. Have you written a business book, a memoir, a self help, or some other book that will help folks and could do so in any language? Maybe someone has even said they think there could be a great market for your book in another country. Before you go down the road of getting your book translated, I think there are some really important considerations and potentially a much more desirable route for you to go with your book. Consideration 1. Do you speak the language you want to translate your book into? If you're fluent in the language your book is going to get translated into, the whole process is much easier. If you don't speak the language, it's going to be quite difficult. So think about the process. I mean, first, your book is actually going to get translated from English to whatever language it is. Whether that's done by artificial intelligence or human doesn't actually matter. So that happens. And then it needs to be read and edited. Things don't always translate perfectly. A perfect example. My husband and I were in Guatemala and we passed by a Chinese food restaurant and the sign out front said, welcome, good luck. Whenever we go into a restaurant that doesn't look clean or it's empty, with every other restaurant on the street jam packed, we always look at each other and go, welcome, good luck. Because we're hoping we don't get sick from eating there. So something got lost in translation there and that was only three words. So imagine what's going to happen when it's your book with 50,000 words. So somebody's going to need to read it and edit that translation. If you don't understand the language, you're not even going to be able to do the word choices with the editor. You have to rely on someone's decisions completely to get your message across in that other language. Consideration 2. You can already See how this is getting a little ugly? You're going to have to trust other people a lot. And because you will need true professionals, you're going to have to pay a lot for this to happen. You thought your book editing was pricey the first time. You're not just paying for translation and editing. You're also going to need a proofreader. Your book cover will need adjustments either to change the language, or if it's going to be in another country, you have to change the book cover. If you look at the same books across different countries, they have different covers. Oh, and by the way, the layout has to be redone too, with this new language. And again, you won't understand the language to check for errors. Eek. Consideration. 3. You can overcome all these hurdles with effort, patience and money. But there's one more biggie. Marketing. If you don't speak the language, how are you going to sell the book? Sure, on Amazon, but that is only if you have book sales currently and people are already demanding your book and it's topping the charts in English. There could be momentum that could translate into another language. We had a client who had massive sales in India and he was interested in translating his book into Hindi. That made sense because he already had a huge market in English in India. So it made sense to pursue that for him. To me, the only other scenario where all of this makes sense to do it is if you have a connection to a group or a company that's going to buy in bulk. And by bulk I mean thousands of books. So you can see I'm not a big fan of getting your book translated. Unless you speak the language, have strong demand that demonstrates a market for other languages, or you have a connection that makes it worthwhile to spend the time, effort and money that's going to have to go in to make this happen. That doesn't mean all is lost and your book will never be in another language. This is just my opinion, but I think the best, best option for authors not in the situation above is to pursue a selective licensing agreement. Giving a publishing company in another country the right to translate the book and market that translated version in select markets. Selective rights licensing is really cool for authors. When you're independent and you own your rights and you're the CEO of your book, you can license those rights out if you want a contract. That's called selective licensing. Limits the term and territory and time you give out those rights. So your precious intellectual property, which I really think you should own to any trade publisher or any rights buyer. So if you want to learn more about selective rights licenses or how to find publishers abroad, I highly recommend you do a Google search for selective rights licenses and find advice from Orna Ross, Joanna Penn Alli which is the alliance of Independent Authors or ibpa. These authors and organizations have really great advice and guidance for this. That's just my opinion. So let's chat about it. Have you had your book translated? How did it go? Share that in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher swag like this fantastic noboringbooks mug Coffee, tea and hot chocolate tastes better in it. One more thing, make sure you've subscribed to the channel and turn those notifications on so we can hang out when videos come out. Every Tuesday and Friday, except in the summer when we take a break. Hang on. I've really enjoyed our time together. You're pretty cool. So if you have a few more minutes, let's hang out for a while longer, okay? YouTube really thinks you're going to enjoy this video. This one right here is a cool video that will save you from boring a reader before your book even begins. It's about book introductions. Nobody else out there gives the advice I give in this video right here, so check it out. Click on one of them. I'm going to get the coffee ready for you. See you there.
