Re-Framing the debate on translation: How translated books escape the niche, and lots of new ventures replace old gatekeepers

The debate on translation is old – and not always very forthcoming: Translations of (notably fiction) books are seen as difficult to sell, costly to produce (due to the cost of translation), while translators, for good reasons, complain about the low pay. And translations are only a meager 3 percent in English language markets anyway.

Is this the dull end of the story about the value of diversity? Or isn’t this the perfect starting point to re-frame the debate?

Translated fiction has suddenly exploded – say Stieg Larsson, but also that 100 year old guy. Even in the United Kingdom, translated books are cool, as The Bookseller has told us today: „Sales of translated titles surge„. 

At BookExpo America, we work on that topic for over a year now, and have discovered loads of surprises: Those many many new ventures taking translation – and its dissemination – into their own hands (not waiting for gate keepers). Those many translation grant initiatives, from a wild diversity of organizations and countries – which you can use, without giving up control over editorial. How digital and the internat and social media make communication with spread out, fragmented, highly specialized targed audiences the norm – not a pitfall and pain.

A long catalogue of questions, and solutions, has emerged. Followed by enormous response to our initial invitation:

Join us for the Global Market Forum: Books in Translation. Wanderlust for the written word. (Oh, and this is my personal pleasure: The idea about the „wanderlust“ came from my US colleagues – making me happy that Kindergarten and Schlagbaum are not the only German words in English!).

For the details, find this nice summary from The Bean – by BEA director Steven Rosato. Or come and debate with us Books in Translation, next week, in New York.

The Weltbild insolvency – Germany is living through its Borders incident

Serious shock waves have been triggered by the announcement of Weltbild filing for insolveny a week ago. The company is one of the largest retailers of books and other media in Europe. Together with Munich based Hugendubel, Weltbild controls Germany’s second largest book chain (behind Thalia), and operates the second largest online platform for books, behind Amazon, and it is a key partner, together with its rival Thalia, of the anti-Amazon ebook Alliance Tolino.

While details of the insolvency and rescue plan may not be clear before March of this year, many observers bet on the heterogenous group’s assets being striped, with the online business forming the core of the valuable pieces to be offered for sale to an investor, while many of the 300 brick and mortar outlets may be doomed.

While initial comments had a tendency to downplay the overall impact on Germany’s book and publishing market, I would disagree, and rather expect this to be the „Borders incident“ for what used to be Europe’s most stable book market. It will shake the Tolino alliance, and thus other initiatives aiming at building local alternatives to the expansion of global players, while Amazon is the likely winner, grabbing much of the market share that Weltbild has grown over the past years, much of it coming from new customer groups rather than from the traditionally conservative book buyers. Also the Weltbild crash must be viewed in line with similar havoc among big book (and media) chains in France (Chapitre, Virgin) or the Netherlands (Selexyz,  Polare).

Find my analysis with more detail at Publishers Weekly here.

Suhrkamp: Die Zahlen hinter der Soap

Natürlich sind die meisten Geschäftszahlen nicht öffentlich, was es schwer macht, sachlich genauer einzuordnen, welche Kräfte und Dynamiken die Causa Suhrkamp tatsächlich bewegen. Denn es ist unwahrscheinlich, dass sich alles nur um jenes Degen-Drama aus schöner Erbin und forschem Parvenü dreht, wie es uns die Berichterstattung vorzumachen versucht. Aber einiges an Eckzahlen gibt es, und erlaubt eine kühlere Bilanz. Der Versuch nachzurechnen ist nachzulesen bei Perlentaucher und im buchreport.

A Global Map of Publishing 2012 – PREVIEW: Our events and reports at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Allow me to proudly invite you to several events and reports about latest developments in international publishing which we prepared for the Frankfurt Book Fair – as examples of our work in the past year.

This is the world of global publishing as we see it today:

see also www.internationalpublishers.org

 

This map was drawn based on the brand new report “The Global Map of Publishing Markets 2012”, which we prepared on behalf of the International Publishers Association (IPA). You can find it, together with a brief analysis on current trends on IPA’s www.internationalpublishers.org or at www.booklab.info .

A second study, the “Global Ebook Markets” report will provide rich ressources and analysis in much more detail, on how digital is growing, not just in the English language sphere, but also in Europe and globally.

It is presented at the TOCFrankfurt conference on Tuesday, October 9, 2012 (http://tocfrankfurt.com/2012-program ), with two different panel: One on “Outsmarting Piracy”, and the other on “Where next?”. The report will be available for download for free from Tuesday at http://shop.oreilly.com .

What are, overall, in the perspective of leading companies, the relevant trends of that industry, and who are the drivers and the actors? This will be discussed at the

Frankfurt CEO panel: Disruption and New frontier.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:30 to 16:00,
Hall 4.2., Room Dimension
http://www.buchmesse.de/en/academy/frankfurt/professional_program/ceopanel/#!prettyPhoto

Meet executives from key players, notably Barnes & Noble, Fnac, Google, Kobo and IndiaPlaza, hosted by the leading industry magazines The Bookseller, buchreport, Livres Hebdo, PublishNews Brazil, Publishers Weekly. This is the annual state of the industry debate, based on our “Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry”.

And for a more indepth approach, we invite you at this special event:

Understanding Arab Publishing:
The United Arab Emirates
(UAE)
Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15 to 17:15
Forum Dialogue, Hall 5.1 A 962.

This debate will introduce the brand new “Research Centre” of the Sharjah International Book Fair, with two studies that we could carry out recently, a thorrough analysis on reading habits in the UAE, and on the emerging UAE publishing market, a the crossroads between Europa, Spouth Asia and the Arab world, and as a hub to an exciting region for culture and business in full change.

For more details, links and downloads to all those topics, go to www.wischenbart.com or to the blog www.booklab.info

As publishing goes digital & global, we have the numbers, and share the insights.

Looking forward to seeing you in Frankfurt!

Weltbild, Urheberrecht (ACTA), Piracy – überall eine lustig verkehrte Welt!

Der Buchhandelskonzern Weltbild soll verkauft werden – aus moralischen Gründen. Oder doch nicht? Kaum haben die katholischen Bischöfe die Kehrtwende beschlossen, steht die Welt der Leselust Kopf: Rechtzeitig zu Urlaubssaison und Strandleselust erscheinen ein, mit Verlaub, Softpornoroman mit dem Titel „Shades of Grey – Geheimes Verlangen“, plus zwei Folgebände, vorgemerkt für Spätsommer und Herbst, und sehr vieles spricht dafür, dass diese Trilogie die Gesamtbilanz des Buchjahres 2012 ganz nachhaltig prägen wird.

Bloß, was macht Weltbild nun damit? Die schlüpfrige Schmonzette boykottieren? Wohl kaum. Den Schmöker in den Läden und Online irgendwo weit hinten verstecken? Schwierig für einen Händler, der so gekonnt auf sein Publikum zugeht. Kaltschnäuzig promoten und abcashen? Wie steht es dann um die eben umkämpfte Glaubwürdigkeit des kirchlichen Eigentümers?

Ähnliche Volten gibt es aber auch bei allerlei anderen Debatten geht es heiter bis wolkig zu. Mehr beim Perlentaucher im Virtualienmarkt.

RELEASE: The Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2012 out today

After Digital, Globalization Plus Emerging Markets Is The Next Frontier For The Publishing Industry.

The « Livres Hebdo Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2012 », co-published by Livres Hebdo (France), Buchreport (Germany), Publishers Weekly (USA), The Bookseller (UK) and PublishNews Brazil (Brazil) maps old champions and new contenders fighting over the global knowledge society.

The top five, as portrayed in the updated “Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry” shows, at the top, a bunch of old champions in the global knowledge society: British Pearson, made of the uncontested leader in Education, and one of the biggest brands in fiction and nonfiction Trade books, Penguin, followed by Reed Elsevier, Thomason Reuters and Wolters Kluwer, spearheading mostly digital services for scientific and professional information, and French Hachette, the new comer to knowledge in a truly worldwide perspective.

Those five companies are giants with yearly publishing revenues (not counting newspapers, magazines, TV of advertising) of more than 2 bn € (or 2.5 bn US$), and imposing a strong presence truly around the globe, to provide book or similarly ‘complex’ content, notably leading journals, to the world.

The ranks beneath the very top mirror a landscape of ultimate change though, with new contenders, including Spanish Grupo Planeta, which owns both a massive share in Latin American and in French publishing, or a lineup of mostly educational publishers from emerging markets, like Brazil’s Abril Educacao, and Saraiva, or “China Education and Media Group”, a recently government sponsored merger of several Chinese publishers into a new global actor, or Russia’s EKSMO (which only a few weeks ago, saved its closest rival, AST from going under, by acquiring it). In Korea, publishers have successfully learned to operate not only entire schools, but hire 30,000 or so teachers for after school tutoring on their materials, and aiming at having entirely digital textbooks by 2015. India, which harbors not one publisher in the Ranking, as its knowledge is still governed from abroad, mostly from market leaders in the UK, has announced a 60$ tablet and grooms its domestic rival to Amazon for distribution, branded Flipkart, to step into the new global race for reading and, more importantly, for learning.

As a consequence, what matters most in the newest update of the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry, is probably as much to be found at the top, as at its long tail, which is growing rapidly in both length and substance.

The Global Ranking has been initiated by the French book trade magazine Livres Hebdo (www.livreshebdo.fr ) in 2007, and is researched by Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, and currently co-published by buchreport (Germany, www.buchreport.de ), The Bookseller (UK, www.TheBookseller.com ), PublishNews (Brazil, www.publishnews.com.br/ ), and Publishers Weekly (US, www.PublishersWeekly.com ). It lists all publishing companies worldwide with revenues from publishing (excluding newspapers, magazines, or financial services) of more than 150 m€ (or 200 mUS$).

 

Background information: www.wischenbart.com/publishing

Contact: ruediger@wischenbart.com

 

 

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