How to Translate Your Book in Other Languages for More Income and Impact

This is episode 20 of Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to Author Audience, where I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message and it's time to let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me as I share all about translating your book to other languages. I think you're going to find this information really helpful, so stay tuned. My name is Shelly Hitz and I have published dozens and dozens of books. But. But one of the really rewarding things that I have done is in 2013 I published my book, 21 Prayers of Gratitude into Spanish. This was just so fun and an amazing way to reach even more people with the same content that I wrote. And I believe you also have a God given message to share with the world and I want to help you get it to even more people in more languages, in more countries. Some of you may not know, but my husband and I were missionaries for two years in the country of Belize and I took many missionary trips in college. I have a heart for missions and just this particular episode really encompasses much of my heart for reaching people in other languages in other countries in ways that you may not even have thought possible.

Have you really thought about the options there are to translate your book and publish it in other languages? In this episode, I'm going to share with you the step by step process of how to do that and I'm excited to share that with you in this. It's time for this week's Center Stage Spotlight training. This is where I share training and strategies to help you grow your business or ministry through writing and publishing books, marketing online, and creating products and services to sell on the back end. So today is episode 20 titled how to translate your book in other languages for more income and impact. I'm excited for you to learn this information and not just learn it, but to put it into action. I love working with action takers and so let's dive right in. So why should you even consider translating your book into other languages? Well, if you followed me for very long, you know that I'm all about getting the most out of the content you write. Write that content one time and use it multiple times. So whether it's a blog post or a book, there are many, many, many ways to repurpose your hard work. One of the ways to repurpose the work you put into writing your book is to publish it into different formats. Print books, ebooks, audiobooks. However, you can also have your book translated into multiple languages. In my research, I did not find much information about the most popular languages to publish on Kindle, but I did see someone say that Spanish and German seem to be on the top of the list. English. Other languages to consider are French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese. At the time of publishing this episode, there are 34 languages supported by KDP and I'll include that list in the show notes for you@authoraudience.com 20 that's the number 20. So when you publish your book in other languages, you'll not only be able to reach more people with your message, but you'll be able to diversify your income. You know there's less competition in many of these other languages, which gives you the opportunity to potentially sell more books. So let me tell you the step by step process of how I got started translating my book into Spanish. Now when I first published my very first book, Mirror Mirror for Teen Girls, I had several people offer to translate that book because they really believed in the message that it contained. But it just seemed like those opportunities always fell through. It was a volunteer or it was somebody that they meant well, but it just never got done. I also had a major Christian publisher contact me about obtaining the rights to Translate my book 21 Prayers of Gratitude into Korean. But nothing ever came out of that opportunity either. So I just didn't know what was really possible. But I decided to really research the process and find out. And what I found is that as an independent author, as an independently published or self published author, I have the rights for those translations and can hire outsourcers to help me do the work. So I didn't have thousands of dollars and I'm sure most of you don't either to have a book translated. Therefore, I decided to use Elance, which is now upwork, and I had never used them before this this particular project and I have to admit I was a little nervous about the process. But I decided to use my best selling book 21 prayers of gratitude and I posted my job online and it was amazing. Within a few hours I had over 20 proposals of contractors willing to translate my book at a very low cost. Now this is a short book so it shouldn't really cost a lot anyways, but it really surprised me. I then researched all the people who applied and I looked for the following I wanted to know that they'd followed my directions in the job posting I asked them to do something very specific when they replied to me so I would know they actually read the job and they weren't just using automated software or something like that. I wanted to see that they had a history of previous jobs on Elance and that they had a high rating from their previous jobs on Elance. Like I said, now Elance is upwork. But at the time in 2013, it was Elance. There's one particular person that stood out to me and I contacted her and asked her if she'd be willing to sign a non disclosure agreement. Now this is a topic for another podcast episode, but when you're dealing with your work, your book, I recommend having your outsourcers sign NDAs. That just means that by signing the NDA, they are, you know, they legally agree that they would only use my book contents for translation purposes and that my publishing company, or me, in my case it's Body and Soul Publishing, would remain the sole owner of the content. I didn't know this person, so I just felt like that was just another layer that was of safety for me and those of you that are author audience academy members in the translation training. I have a link to download that non disclosure agreement and a video. Just walking you through what I did when I added my post. But I contacted this translator and she agreed to the NDA and we started the process. You know, her bid was a little bit higher than some of the other contractors, but to me it was worth it because she had a longer history of completed jobs. Her rating was higher than most at the time. It was 4.9 out of 5. And she was also willing to complete the small book it was. That particular book ended up only being around 5,000 words, but she agreed to complete it in only three days. So I was really, really excited to get started with her. Now, an important step when you're translating your book is to use a proofreader or editor. And I suggest finding someone that can proofread your translated book. This is an important step so that you can check the work of your contractor and make sure the content is being translated in the correct way. I definitely wanted to do this and I found someone that I went to college with that is bilingual and I asked her if she would proofread my book. What I ended up doing is I decided to pay about 45% of what I paid the translator. You know, I didn't have a specific reason for choosing this price, but it was just kind of what I thought would be fair. And she agreed and it was good. You know, she went through the book and she confirmed it was a good translation since I don't know Spanish and I just want to make sure I'm putting out good stuff out there. I wanted to make sure it was good. But she had just a few recommended changes. So after that I was ready to format my book and publish it. So the formatting of publishing is pretty much the same as your regular self published books. You'll go through the Process with Kindle, CreateSpace, IngramSpark or ACX for an audiobook and I ended up doing that and having my finished product. And yet I learned some lessons along the way. The first thing I learned is make sure you get everything you need translated. So I had to go back to her because I'd forgotten to have her translate my book description, my bio and the information for my opt in page and the emails for my autoresponder. So I set up a marketing funnel for my Spanish book and I'd forgotten to have her do all that stuff in the beginning. So I had to go back and ask her to do this. And she was gracious, you know, to do it even though I'd already paid her and the job was over. But I also learned that Google Translate can help if you're in a bind. Now, I would not use this to translate your book because you just never know what it will, you know what will happen.

It's a software, not a person. But I did use it a few times to translate things that I used in my email autoresponder. And I was familiar with Spanish because I took it in high school and college. So I felt comfortable enough to know that the translation was accurate. But next time I knew that after that first time I needed to have everything ready in advance. Now the second thing I learned was there's a specific Spanish category on Amazon for KDP for Kindle books. So every language will be different. But what I found was that when I chose normal categories in kdp, it listed my book as an English book on the Amazon sites for Mexico and Spain. And I didn't want that. So I researched the exact categories I wanted for those two Spanish speaking countries and requested the change manually through KDP's support. Also, there's a specific category for each language that you choose and I went back and changed my categories so they'd be listed in the Spanish books. You know, that's where you want to be found. If it's a Spanish book or whatever language it is, it just allows my target audience to find it easier I will put the links in the show notes for you as well to those specific categories.

In order to get the book in the category Kindle Store Kindle Ebooks Foreign Languages Spanish the language setting of the book needed to be Spanish and so I had to change that. In the back office of kdp you go into KDP and then you up, you know, you go to edit your book and in the other Book Actions column click Edit Book Details under the language section, just change it from English to Spanish and then save it and republish it. Boy, there was a lot of little things I didn't realize, but I hope that you're able to learn from my mistakes and get all of these things right from the beginning. Now just a couple marketing tips. I do recommend that you start a new email list specific to that language, create a simple opt in page for anyone interested in knowing when you release new books in that language, and then add that link to the front and the back of your book. So similar to the things that I teach for your regular books having that call to action, I recommend having something specific to that language for that book and then recruit reviewers. So look at other Spanish books similar to yours and contact their Amazon reviewers. You may also want to check with your translator or your proofreader to see if they know anyone who would be interested that knows that language in reviewing your book because they might be able to ask some family or friends. But like I said, I have.

Several other resources for you in Author Finance Academy, the NDA template as well as the video on using.

Sites like Upwork and Elance and so I encourage you to check those out if you are a member. But I want to give you another resource. So other than just finding a Translate Translator on Upwork.com you can also check out Babel Cube BabelCube.com is it kind of reminds me of ACX.com for audiobooks and what they do is they connect translators with authors and provide this service for you. Now I have not personally used it, but I will put a link to their Frequently Asked page for authors as well as their royalty page in the show notes for you. The downfall is their current system doesn't really have a way to check for the quality of the translation. So again you'd have to hire a proofreader or editor to ensure that was done well. But that is another option for you. So I hope you've gotten a ton of great ideas for translating your book into other languages. I know that it is possible you can do this and I'm excited to hear your results.

Lights, camera, Action. It's time for this week's Take Action Tip. If you already have a book or books published, I'd like you to decide if you want to pursue an avenue of translating your book into another language. Make that decision. Is that something that you want to do and is it something that's a priority now? Or maybe it's something you put on your list for later? Then decide if you could translate your book into any language, which language would you choose and why? Also, make sure to get all the show notes because I have some great resources and links for you in those show notes@authoraudience.com 20 that's the number 20.

Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week's Package Godly Gains segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. In the end, it's not about us, it's about Him. And those of you that are Christ followers, you'll be very familiar with the verse that I've chosen for today. It's Mark 16:15.

And Jesus is saying, go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. With the evolution and the ability of self publishing and print on demand publishing, it is now possible to reach so many people in multiple countries and multiple languages with the gospel. And so if your book has a gospel message in it or a message that could impact people's lives, this may be something to consider. Now I'm not promising that you'll get rich from translating your book, but I'll have to admit the other month I looked at our book royalties and my Spanish book was one of my top selling books. So you never know how it will do. But what you do know is that God is able to use it in ways to reach people. And even if there's just one person that is impacted, I know that it's been worth it for me. But I also know that.

The book is selling and is reaching more people with the message of gratitude, which really is exciting for me.

So it's my hope and my goal that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to being able to shine and reach more people with your message. I'm excited to see what you do with this information. If you decide to get your book translated into another language, I would love to hear from you. Contact me@shellyhits.com or find me online. Shelly hits pretty much on every social media platform and if you'd like a free copy of my book, self publishing books 101, it has all the information on just getting started with self publishing, and you can find it@authoraudience.com.

Self publishing so thank you so much for joining me again in this episode and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelly's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.