Tips for Selling Books Internationally

My son is constantly correcting me. He says I need to start speaking American if I'm going to live in America. Process, Mom. Speak American. It's process. But did you know that not only is there a difference in how Canadians pronounce certain words, but also how we price books, spell words, and even consume books? And that's just with the US's biggest neighbor. What else do you need to know as an American author selling books around the world if you're keen to understand the obstacles, opportunities, other just interesting facts for selling books internationally, well, this video is for you. While the United States is a big book market, there are plenty of English speaking countries around the world that are hungry for your book too. We've even had some authors sell a lot of books to English readers in India and other countries where English maybe isn't their first language, but it's a big second language now. It's not necessarily something every author needs to worry about, especially if they have primarily written written their book for the American market. But if you're an author like Steve Molter and you've written this fantastic book called Nothing Gets Sold until the Story Gets Told, your market is much wider than between New York and California. His book is about corporate storytelling and how to give a talk that lasts long after you stop speaking to have an impact in an organization and beyond. So here are some things to think about if you're Steve or any other author that might like to appeal to readers beyond the us. Number one, Success in the US helps you internationally. When I speak with international authors, whether they're in Singapore, Europe, Dubai or some other country, I find that many of them feel confident they can sell their book at home, but they know it will be more successful if they can get traction in the us. Many authors in other countries want to create success in the United States because that gives them credibility in their own market as well as it expands the opportunities they can create as an authority. What this means is if you're an American author before you set your sights on other countries, spend some time driving your marketing in the American market. Creating success in your home market if you're an American sets you up for international opportunities. One of those opportunities might be to license the rights to your book in other countries to a publisher. This is something I recommend. Authors wanting a translation of their book for another country that isn't English focused. It's useful to have a company that knows the market and can speak the language for promotions as well as for production. But sometimes this is a great option for English books in other countries too. Of course, you don't need to license rights to sell books in English speaking countries. Between IngramSpark and KDP Print, you have a really solid international reach already. But a local publisher sometimes brings a lot of push for you if you're in the US and they're local to their country. But like any publisher, they are only going to be interested interested in your book if you can prove it's got a strong market. So first things first, Promote your book in the American market to gain international success. Number two, know the lingo of your desired market. Here's the thing. If you're an author in a country other than the US and you want to sell your book in the us, you probably need to use American English for your book. If you're an American author wanting to sell your book in other countries, you probably don't have to do this as much to accommodate the other countries. It's kind of sad, but true. US non Americans are used to reading American English and in fact we can even write American fluently. Okay, now you might be wondering what I'm talking about. Well, here's some examples. How do you spell check? British English spells it C H E Q U E. Traveller has two L's and color in many other countries has checked a U in it. This cool thing on my head, I call it a toque. Now how you spell that word, well, try and get a Canadian to agree on that. But I can tell you that if you see it spelled T O Q U E, an American thinks it's spelled toque. But to me you'd spell that T O K E. And I mean, if you're in Australia, there are entire phrases that need translation sometimes. Some of my favorites, and I will not attempt an Australian accent, but some of my favorite phrases, having a whinge or a whinger, you know, as in complaining Thongs. We're not talking underwear when we talk thongs. We're talking the shoes that you might know as flip flops. Sunnies, of course are sunglasses. How are you going? How are you? And the word heaps, because that's heaps good. I mean, there's so, so many things. But here's the thing. If you are an American, you can write your book as you would normally. The other countries are largely used to it. If you're not an American but you want to sell books in America, well, you probably should watch out because you could get a lot of bad reviews for typos. If you are spelling using your country's spelling and vernacular. I mean look how offended my son gets My Canadian born son gets when I ask him if he wants to play Super Mario with me. It's Super Mario. But seriously, I know most people are aware of the oddities in language between other countries, but you may not have known that there tons of words that are spelled differently depending on what country you're from. Also, it's worth noting that Amazon Author Central encourages you to upload your author bio in multiple languages if your book is in English. I'm not certain why you put your author bio in other languages, but it could make you searchable in languages by readers who also read English. But knowing the spelling differences and the oddities in language can help you if you are targeting another market because you can use those in your keywords to appeal to the search engines in those countries. Didn't I say there's three? I think there's got to be more than three points here. Number three every country has its own Amazon. There's Amazon CA Amazon.commx, amazon br Amazon.co.uk Amazon.in. there's so many different sites for Amazon. Every single one has its own nuances, from what it shows on the home screen to how the product images appear to how the dates are shown. If you dig deeper you will see that the books that are top selling in the various categories your book is in are different in each country, but there are some standard ones that seem to always be there. Like for my book in the authorship type categories on writing well is almost always top the charts in most of the countries, but the company it keeps varies. There's not such a category in India, so you find my book alongside writing guides to teach children how to write. With that, it's also worth noting that the categories vary country to country. There is also some differences in book covers. You'll see this more dramatically in Europe than between Canada, US and the uk. The big point here is more to understand that there are market differences even across a single company. Number four is pricing. I have an entire video on pricing your book for international markets, so I'm not going to recap that video here. I'll just link to it at the end instead. I'll note something for you that you may not realize. Typically, books in Canada and Australia are priced higher than US books. Even after the currency exchange in Canada they're often about 30 to 40% higher. So depending on exchange rates, that's often still a much higher price for a book in Canada than in the US. In Australia they're almost always 50 to 70% higher than the price of an American book. Now, you may not care about that dollar or two, but keep in mind cheaper is not always better, and there's a perceived value factor that you need to keep in mind. If you're dramatically cheaper than the top books, then readers may consciously or subconsciously believe you are offering that much less value. On the flip side of that, if you're selling in a country that prices books much lower, you'll be setting yourself up to collect dust instead of royalties if you just convert based on currency difference and price yourself too high. Of course, you also have to take into consideration your costs and IngramSpark and KDP print both have handy currency converters to help you, but I wouldn't just go off their conversion, especially if it's a market you expect to have some volume of sales in. Spend a minute getting the pricing right for your book in each market. Number five Amazon, ACX and Kindle aren't as popular in other markets as they are in the American market. One of the things we've talked about before is that Kobo is a really popular E reader in Canada and other countries. I couldn't find recent Data, but in 2019 GoodReader had indicated that Kindle and Kobo usage was almost exactly the same amount of people, and Google and Apple were behind them. When it comes to audiobook consumption, there's a lot of places that people get audiobooks. Libro FM, Scribd might be scribed. I think it's Scribd, audiobooks.com, downpour, Chirp, Spotify, and of course libraries and more. Now this is where a service like Findaway, Voices or Authors Republic is really useful because you can reach all those ears without having to upload and manage all the accounts. But the point is, in the US Audible is king, but there's a lot of other countries out there when it comes to eBooks. Draft 2 digital works really well for wide distribution to all the places you can hit Kobo, Apple and so many e reading platforms without having to upload to all the places. Now we haven't talked about marketing internationally, but a lot of what you'll do organically will find its international market. Let's give a shout out to my international YouTube besties right now. Alan West Poetry from the Heart Antonio Dos Santos Mike Herd oh my goodness, I'm drawing a blank and I know I have more besties around the world, so post your country below so I can make sure I've got you for next time. And while you're here, make sure you've subscribed to the channel, because when you comment the day a video is released, you're entered to win some of our fabulous hashtag no boring books swag like our oh so famous mug, and you move one step closer to becoming one of my besties. International or domestic Marketing internationally requires more than just content on the Internet, but the reality is that you will attract people from other countries just by doing YouTube videos, podcast interviews, blog posts, and more. So it's good to be ready for that international attention that you'll get for your work and your book. Okay, this is the video I promised on international pricing. Check that one out. And with all this talk of American and international sales, you should also be on the lookout for some common Amazon scams that have been happening. This video has the down low on what you need to know There. Go ahead, click on over. I'm waiting. I'm in the process of making dinner. What do you want? Process. Speak American, mommy.