Writers Omi at Ledig House Translation Lab, Fall 2012

Writers Omi at Ledig House, a part of Omi International Arts Center, has been awarded a grant from Amazon.com to fund Translation Lab, a weeklong special, intensive residency for five collaborating writer‐translator teams in the fall of 2012. Writers Omi will host five English language translators to the Omi International Arts Center for one week. These translators will be invited along with the writers whose work is being translated. This focused residency will provide an integral stage of refinement, allowing translators to dialogue with the writers about text‐specific questions. It will also serve as an essential community‐builder for English‐language translators who are working to increase the amount of international literature available to American readers.

The dates for Translation Lab are November 9‐16, 2012. All residencies are fully funded, including international airfare and local transport from New York City to the Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, NY.

Writers Omi will be accepting proposals for participation until July 1, 2012. Translators, writers, editors, or agents can submit proposals. Each proposal should be no more than three pages in length and provide the following information:

• Brief biographical sketches for the translator and writer associated with each project;

• Publishing status for proposed projects (projects that do not yet have a publisher are still eligible);

• A description of the proposed project;

• Contact information (physical address, email, and phone).

Proposals should be submitted only once availability for residency participation of the translator and writer has been confirmed. All proposals and inquiries should be sent directly to DW Gibson, director or Writers Omi at Ledig House at: dwgibson@artomi.org.

I’m sure will object to translators, international writers, and literary readers benefitting from this, but I’ll save that snark for after the Salon.com article about this topic comes out. (How’s that for a tease?) . . .

. . . Although I can’t resist pointing out that this line is remarkably stupid: “Suddenly Amazon began giving money away, but only to specific organizations of its choosing.” Really?!? They chose who to give their money to? FOR SHAME. I wonder if the NEA—or, I don’t know, every foundation in the history of fucking foundations—has ever considered doing something so radical as only giving away their money to organizations they want to support. SO IMMORAL. No, that article doesn’t sound like sour grapes. Not at all. Especially since it’s written by a “for-profit” press, which, I’ll take to assume means “completely ignorant of the inner workings of a non-profit press.”

Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest. Now go on and apply for this Translation Lab. It’s much >> all the bitching and moaning by people who don’t do dick for translators.

OK, done. For real this time.

First up, the phenomenal Melville House is

Duties include performing all aspects of book publicity, including: designing campaigns; writing press materials; securing coverage; managing pre-publication reviews and publicity; arranging and managing events and tours; maintaining social networking campaigns; daily blogging on our award-winning website; representing the company at events; and raising the company’s profile.

THIS IS NOT AN ENTRY LEVEL JOB. Salary in the mid- to upper-30s plus benefits.

Melville House runs so many amazing publicity campaigns . . . In fact, there might not be a more creative press out there. I can only imagine how much fun this job would be. Anyway, click the link above for the full details.

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At the other end of the spectrum (and yes, I am getting a perverse pleasure out of this juxtaposition), is hiring a publicist to focus on their literary fiction and translations.

The successful candidate will be responsible for promoting Amazon Publishing’s literary fiction and books in translation. In addition to traditional title publicity and demonstrated expertise in the area of literary fiction, the successful candidate must have an eye for innovation: the Publicist will ideate and drive strategies for books to thrive in the digital age, discovering new ways to connect with readers, including engagement through social media and the blogging community.

The successful candidate should be motivated by a start-up culture and the challenge of building a new and exciting business while leveraging the possibilities of a new delivery platform. This role is based in New York City and will require periodic travel.

Core Job responsibilities: – Plan and execute publicity campaigns for a diverse list of books in order to drive sales – Write press materials; pitch and secure top national and local media, including print, broadcast and online outlets – Create and manage media lists and build strong relationships with key media – Collaborate with editorial and marketing teams in order to drive successful title launches

Again, click the link above for all the details.

Writers Omi at Ledig House, a part of Omi International Arts Center, has been awarded a $26,000 grant from Amazon.com to support two “Amazon.com Translator Fellowships” in 2012. Both fellowships will support a one-month residency at Ledig House for the selected translators. Application for the Amazon.com Translator Fellowships will be open for all translators who wish to apply.

In addition to the translator fellowships, Amazon.com will fund Translation Lab, a week-long special, intensive residency for five collaborating writer-translator teams in the spring of 2012.

With the support of Amazon.com, Ledig House will invite five American translators to Ledig House for one week. These translators will be invited along with the writers whose work they are translating. This focused residency will provide an integral stage of refinement, allowing translators to dialogue with the writers about text-specific questions. It will also serve as an essential community-builder for English-language translators who are working to increase the amount of international literature available to American readers.

According to Ledig House’s director, DW Gibson, “Translators often talk about the questions they compile for authors they are translating, questions of great nuance that require discussion, questions about the history or intension of a word, phrase, or bit of slang. Translation Lab will give translators the opportunity to directly address these questions in a collaborative setting.”

Ledig House’s basic program is absolutely fantastic, and I think the Translation Lab will be a huge boon for translators, since that interaction is extremely valuable. And the Ledig House is a fantastic space to work . . .

Having started this award one morning when I was drunk on coffee and ambition, I was really proud and excited to be able to announce this. All I ever wanted to accomplish with this prize was to bring more recognition to excellent works of literature translated by excellent translators. And yes, I’ll take full credit and responsibility for getting and accepting the $25K from Amazon. Obviously I talked to all of our panelist about this before nailing everything down, but I brought the idea to Amazon, and in the end, it was my decision to do this.

Over the past few years I’ve dreamt of how to make the awards more well known, more respected, more institutionalized, and in my opinion, this prize money will do just that. More people will talk about the winners, heaping praise on the winning artists and hopefully helping get the titles into the hands of more readers. And I still think this was the ultimate best decision, even after obsessing over reading about how Melville House will no longer participate in the BTBAs.

I don’t want to engage with Dennis’s core issue (Amazon is evil, therefore money given by Amazon is laced with evil¹), since that will get us nowhere fast and detracts from the main point: that winning translators and authors will each receive $5,000 cash this year. Now, I don’t know all the specifics of Melville House translator contracts, but I’m willing to make a guess that $5,000 is equal to, or more than, the average translator gets paid for doing a book for Melville House. (I know it is for Open Letter at least.)

There are a couple things I do want to say in response to Dennis’s post and comments. First off, it’s actually not possible for Melville House to “withdraw from any future involvement” with the prize. We run the BTBAs like the National Book Critics Circle awards—publishers are encouraged to send eligible titles to the panelists, but panelists are also out buying, reading, and evaluating books on their own. We do this for the same reason that we don’t charge a submission fee—so that small presses that may not have the resources and infrastructure of a Random House can still be considered for the prize.

For example, last year at almost the eleventh hour for the voting, Michael Orthofer told all of us about The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas. None of us had heard of this because Ariadne Press wasn’t aware of the award, or didn’t bother sending us copies, or whatever. But the book was one of the best eligible translations published in 2009, and we wanted everyone to know about it.

Point being, unless Melville House stops publishing literature in translation (which I don’t think is going to happen anytime soon), their titles will still be considered for the award. We won’t expect any review copies to be arriving on the doorsteps of our panelists anytime soon (although seeing that the majority are also reviewers, we might end up receiving more books than we expect), and if a Melville House title is chosen, we will offer the money to the winning author and translator. It’s up to them if they want to reject it or not. We’ll still promote the book, try and get people to read it, etc., etc.

And yes, as in years past, we will try and promote the crap out of these titles through independent bookstores. I worked for years in indie stores before getting into publishing and will always have a soft spot in my heart for what they do. I love the people in bookselling, the feeling of being in a bookstore, of browsing, of overhearing bookish conversations, of getting a recommendation from someone who’s more well-read than I am. Simply put, indie bookstores kick ass. And as was demonstrated with the now on hiatus Reading the World program, and the number of judges on our panels, indie stores are great supporters of international literature, and we (me, Open Letter, Three Percent, the BTBAs, society) would be lost without them.

Since oversharing is a hallmark of this blog, I do want to say that reading about Dennis’s post on dozens and dozens of blogs and tweets and whatever rocked my mind a little bit. As I said above, this was my decision, and the awards my baby, so I take any and all criticisms way more personally than maybe I should. Learning how best to run and promote this awards has been a process. We’re still experimenting with how best to announce the awards, with how to promote the winning titles. And we’ll keep experimenting. Undeniably, Amazon’s contribution will help us reach these goals, and I’m sorry that Dennis has chosen to try and undermine the awards in an attempt to make a political point. We’re going to continue doing what we’re doing, and doing all we can do to champion literature in translation.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled postings.

¹ As a corollary to Dennis’s post, I wonder if he’s also withdrawing support from PEN America, the 92nd St. Y, and

Amazon.com customers have bought more Kindle e-books than both hardback and paperback books combined for the top 10, 25, 100 and 1,000 bestselling books on Amazon.com over the last 30 days. [. . .]

Steve Kessel, senior vice-president of Amazon Kindle, said: “For the top 10 bestselling books on Amazon.com, customers are choosing Kindle books over hardcover and paperback books combined at a rate of greater than 2 to 1. Kindle books are also outselling print books for the top 25, 100, and 1,000 bestsellers—it’s across the board.”

As a good friend pointed out last night, with ebook sales making up less than 20% of a publisher’s total sales (probably much less than 20%), this seems not just inaccurate, but basically impossible. And to be honest, it just doesn’t feel right.

Which raises a few questions: Is there any mathematical explanation that could make these statements make sense? And if not, why release something like this?

My math skills are less than amazing, but these two perspectives (Amazon sold more ebooks than print one; Publishers sell four times more print books than e-versions) could be reconciled, if the great majority of print books were being sold by outlets other than Amazon, whereas almost all ebooks are going to the Kindle.

This does make some degree of sense. Since we’re talking about just bestsellers here (Kessel’s 2:1 statement only applies to the top 1,000 bestselling titles), Barnes & Noble, independents, and most crucially, non-bookstores (Costco, Sam’s Club, Target, etc.), will make up a much larger percentage of total print book sales than they would for a typical midlist title.

So, if we pretend for a moment that Amazon’s numbers aren’t bullshit, and that they control approx. 80% of the ebook market, this would mean that their market share for print book sales of bestsellers is less than 10%. (I think. Again, though I like math in theory, that theory is very abstract and far away from my life.)

To make this as concrete as possible, let’s pretend there’s a book that sells 1,000,000 copies total—both print and ebook version. Assuming ebook sales make up 20% of the total, this book sold 800,000 print versions, 200,000 ebook versions. And if Amazon controls 80% of the ebook market, then 160,000 of these ebooks were Kindle editions. And if the ebooks sold at a rate of 2:1 over print versions on Amazon, Amazon only sold 80,000 print editions, which is a pretty small portion of the print book market.

And if publishers are overestimating e-sales, and the real figure is closer to 10%, then Amazon accounts for even less of the print market.

Again, totally pulling these numbers out of my ass, and I’m probably miscalculating all over the place, but in trying to do whatever necessary to reconcile these two statements (ebooks 2:1 over print, ebooks are only 20% of a book’s total sales), Amazon looks a bit weaker than I would’ve expected.

So what does this mean? Well, one possible crack-pot interpretation is that Amazon is cannibalizing its own sales. That it would so much rather people buy the Kindle version (even at a loss), making money off of the device itself. (Digression: I was going to put “making money off of the device itself and complementary sales of other products,” but that’s a weird flaw in the Kindle-as-selling-tool argument. Amazon makes tons of cash off of spontaneous additional purchases: “I want Freedom . . . and a toaster!” But the Kindle is wedded to book purchases only. Interesting.)

And maybe this is a reflection on society itself. We’re so driving by instant satisfaction (I feel frustrated and delayed simply having to sign in to the U of R’s wifi every morning. Can’t this process be automatic so that I don’t have to wait 30 seconds to check my email?) that if we want a book, we want it now, meaning that we’ll buy it on our Kindle if we prefer the e-version, or in the checkout line of Wegmans if we’re print bound. Why wait for Amazon to ship it?

All this scares me deeply. For a Bulgarian novel contest that I’m judging (more on that later), I put a few of the pieces on our office Kindle and read them at home last night. It was fine, but to be honest, I mainly just wanted to check out what other books I could buy for the Kindle. (Especially since our Kindle is tied to Nate’s checking account.) I thought it sucked when the lines in the text were all jacked up, crankily complained via text messages about how this minor flaw made the sample feel even more ephemeral than it already did, etc., etc. In some ways, I feel like I’m all over this digital revolution or whatever, but in others I’m just as cranky and myopic as fricking Andy Rooney and think we should all slow down and spend more time actually reading rather than seeking out our next purchase.

As to the why of Amazon’s timing, that’s pretty obvious. Yesterday B&N announced the which has a color touchscreen and is being positioned as a “reading tablet.” (Which is somewhere between a Kindle e-reader and an iPad tablet.) It does look pretty cool, and might actually satisfy the needs of a particular group of customers. Rather than compete on products, it does make more sense for Amazon to come out with a bad-ass statement about how many ebooks they’re selling.

Basically, I think they were scared of this super-lame chart from B&N’s presentation:

Also, if you’re a publisher/author/translator and want to submit a book for consideration, be sure to check out this page, where you’ll find the mailing addresses for all of the judges. More info on our judges and the award next week when I finally (hopefully) have a chance to post an update to the translation database. But for now, here’s the official press release . . .

October 20, 2010—Amazon.com has awarded the Ģ����ý/Three Percent website a $25,000 grant in support of the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards. This grant will support $5,000 cash prizes for both the winning translators and authors.

Launched by in 2007, the Best Translated Book Awards aim to bring attention to the best original works of international fiction and poetry published in the U.S. during the previous year. Judges base their decision on both the quality of the original work and the quality of the English translation. Until this year, however, the award carried no cash prize.

“Over the past few years, the awards have grown in stature, and the introduction of a cash prize for the winners will greatly enhance the reputation and reach of the award,” said Chad W. Post, director of Open Letter Books and Three Percent.

According to fiction panelist Matthew Jakubowski, “Without a doubt, this level of support for translated literature helps enrich book culture in our country. Publishers, authors, translators, and of course the growing number of readers attuned to new literature from around the world will benefit. And best of all, every year the BTBAs provide a great way to learn about dozens of great new books that we’d otherwise hear little about.”

On January 27, 2011, the twenty-five-title fiction longlist will be announced on the Three Percent and websites, and over the following month each title will be individually highlighted through short write-ups by the various judges. The ten-title shortlists for both fiction and poetry will be announced on March 24th, and the winning titles will be celebrated at a special reception during the PEN World Voices Festival at the end of April.

Recent winners for fiction include Tranquility by Attila Bartis, translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein (Archipelago), and The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu (Melville House). In poetry, The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova, translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler (Ugly Duckling), received the award in 2010, and For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide, translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu (New Directions), received the award in 2009.

Information about how to submit a title for the 2011 Best Transalted Book Awards can be found on the

In addition to sponsoring the Best Translated Book Awards, Amazon.com has awarded grants to a diverse range of not-for-profit author and publisher groups dedicated to fostering the creation, discussion, and publication of new writing and new voices, including Ledig House, Milkweed Editions, Copper Canyon Press, Open Letter, Archipelago Books, PEN American Center, Words Without Borders, and the Center for the Art of Translation, all of which are committed to the international exchange of literature and the work of translators.

The Ledig House is a fantastic organization and it’s very cool that Amazon will be sponsoring three “Amazon.com Translator Fellowships,” covering month-long stays for three different translators.

More info is available is available on the Ledig House site and at the page.

The big news this week was Jeff Bezos’s announcement that Amazon.com is now selling more e-books than hardcovers. From the

Amazon.com Inc. said it reached a milestone, selling more e-books than hardbacks over the past three months. [. . .]

Amazon said Kindle device sales accelerated each month in the second quarter—both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis. But the statistics that Amazon shared were all relative—it didn’t share actual sales figures. The company has never said how many Kindle devices or e-books it has sold. [. . .]

Amazon painted a picture of accelerating growth in sales of e-books, which can be read on the Kindle and through software on a host of other devices, including Apple’s iPad and iPhone. The figures don’t include free e-books.

Over the past month, the Seattle retailer sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books it sold, it said.

At one of the independent bookstore I used to work for the owner would always give us data on the store’s performance in a series of ratios. This was always extremely aggravating, since he’d project a bar graph with no scale, no numbers, a sliver of profit (how much? A million dollars? Ten?) and a lecture about how we were all wasting too much time reading and not organizing the shelves.

So I get why everyone’s critical of this statement, and granted it would be nice to know what actual figures are. (Although this is the book business . . . Real hard data, like, how about actual print runs?, isn’t all that easy to come buy. Even when hard data seems to exist—such as BookScan—a lot of effort is put into debunking that so that everything can remain as murky as possible.) That said, it’s interesting to note that sales of hardcover books at Amazon.com increased last year, and unless the sales of paperbacks plummeted (unlikely) it sounds like ebook sales were more supplementary than cannibalistic. And that’s interesting.

What I’d be interested in finding out is ebook sales by genre. Even if given in ratio form (for every 1 ebook sold of literature in translation, 70,000 business ebooks were sold), this would be interesting to know. And would sort of clarify the current scene a bit. Cause maybe not all ebooks are epubbed equally. Or whatever.

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Speaking of ebooks and their distribution, over at there’s a longish article on Google Editions and what it is:

So what does Google Editions add to the mix? The answer, based on conversations with Google representatives and bookseller—particularly among the independent stores—is that Google will be adding millions of digital titles for sale on any device with Internet access: smart phones, tablets, netbooks, desktops, and every digital reading device except Kindle, which for now at least continues to operate on a closed proprietary system. But Google and Amazon are continuing discussions, so that may yet change.

In preparation for its rollout, Google says that through its “Partnership Program” it has made deals with 35,000 publishers and scanned millions of titles. For now, if you go to Google Books, you can preview up to 20 percent of the title you select (go ahead and try it with a best-seller like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and then choose from available options for purchase of the printed book. Assuming the program works as planned, Google Editions will put up for sale a vast universe of trade e-books, plus technical and professional titles and out of copyright works (which will be free) for use when, where and how the consumer chooses. The consumer will put the books they buy on Google’s cloud (which means its enormous servers) and can access their personal library at will. Suppose you start reading on your iPhone and switch to your tablet or desktop—the book will pick up where you left off.

In effect, Google Editions seems poised to become the world’s largest seller of e-books. If you’ve followed this issue in recent years, it may seem confusing that Google will be selling books while still in litigation with the Association of American Publishers and the Author’s Guild over the right to display the texts of millions books Google has scanned through its library project. That case applies solely to books obtained from cooperating libraries that made their collections available to Google to, in effect, give away, which is why the publishers objected. The settlement under consideration now in the courts would require Google to pay royalties for books it displays and gives authors the right to opt out of the program if they choose to do so. In any event, the outcome of that case has no bearing on the Google Editions enterprise, according to Google’s spokesmen.

This should be interesting . . .

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I still think it’s funny that the L.A. Times interviewed a twelve-year-old from a Rochester suburb for their but this article is pretty interesting. Starting from the p.o.v. that digital will change everything (sure, sure, beliefs and qualifications and dissents all noted), Alex Pham and David Sarno list a number of interesting reading and writing related websites. Because of my obsession with how people find out about books, this is the part I like the best:

“We’ve pretty much reached the point where the supply has now shifted to infinite,” said Richard Nash, former head of Soft Skull Press, a small New York publisher. “So the next question is: How do you make people want it?” Part of the answer may be found on a digital library and social networking site where millions of members can log in and chat about any book they want, including many that will never see print.

Lori Hettler of Tobyhanna, Pa., runs one of the largest book clubs on Goodreads, with nearly 7,000 members chiming in from all over the globe. Discussions can go on for hundreds of messages, with readers passionately championing — or eviscerating — the club’s latest selection.

I’ve really been getting into Goodreads over the past few months, especially now that it’s linked up with my Facebook account. It’s thanks to Goodreads that I found out about Albert Cossery.

And related to the series of posts I was writing about the future of reading, I mentioned Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, the way using the Internet reconfigures your brain, how hyperlinks make it hard to remember shit, et cetera, et cetera. This bit from the end of the L.A. Times piece sort of reflects on that:

Whereas printed texts often are linear paths paved by the author chapter by chapter, digital books encourage readers to click here or tap there, launching them on side journeys before they even reach the bottom of a page. Some scholars fear that this is breeding a generation of readers who won’t have the attention span to get through “The Catcher in the Rye,” let alone “Moby-Dick.”

“Reading well is like playing the piano or the violin,” said the poet and critic Dana Gioia, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “It is a high-level cognitive ability that requires long-term practice. I worry that those mechanisms in our culture that used to take a child and have him or her learn more words and more complex syntax are breaking down.”

But Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills, said it was a mistake to conclude that young people learned less simply because “they are flitting around all over the place” as they read.

“Kids are reading and writing more than ever,” he said. “Their lives are all centered around words.”

Dr. Gary Small, director of the Center on Aging at UCLA and author of “iBrain,” said Internet use activated more parts of the brain than reading a book did.

On the other hand, online readers often demonstrate what Small calls “continuous partial attention” as they click from one link to the next. The risk is that we become mindless ants following endless crumbs of digital data. “People tend to ask whether this is good or bad,” he said. “My response is that the tech train is out of the station, and it’s impossible to stop.”

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But simply making things digital and available and whatever isn’t necessarily enough. Over at the always fascinating (and very well-designed) Penguin’s Tom Roberge has an interesting post about the Internet, hierarchy, and design (scroll down to “Annotations” section and look for “At Swim in the Shallows” to read the whole thing):

In a recent New York Times op-ed, David Brooks wrote, “The Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is egalitarian.” This is a long-standing claim, and is on one level true: Internet access offers (near) universal freedom to create and disseminate information, and to consume it on the other end. But on another level, this assertion is complete bullshit: We all know that the Internet has its own hierarchy, that the virtual equivalent of the crazy homeless man ranting about UFOs shouldn’t be—and, generally, is not—taken seriously.

Consider design. Books, for several hundred years, have not changed much at all. The paper is nicer. The covers last longer. And the evolution of printing technology has allowed for prettier pictures. But the format has remained static since the letterpress days: One reads from left to right, top to bottom, turning the pages to make progress. The Internet, on the other hand, is almost infinitely malleable—but you need a good blacksmith. Which has led to a hierarchy: the nicer, the more professional looking a site is, the more respected it is. Which sort of negates the egalitarianism.

The latest addition to the list is the extremely worthy Archipelago Books:

Archipelago Books is delighted to announce today that it is among a diverse group of nonprofit organizations to receive a $25,000 grant from Amazon.com. Archipelago Books is a Brooklyn, NY-based not-for-profit press dedicated to publishing world literature in translation. The generous grant from Amazon.com will be used to support the forthcoming publication of the novel Stone Upon Stone, written by Nike Prize-winning author Wiesaw Myliwski and translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston. The novel will be released in December of 2010.

Myliwski’s novels and plays, among them Widnokrag [Horizon] (1996) and Traktat o uskaniu fasoli [A Treatise on Shelling Beans] (2006) focus on life in the Polish countryside. Although he has twice received the Nike Award (the Polish equivalent of the Booker Prize), Stone Upon Stone will be Myliwski’s first work published in English translation. Stone Upon Stone has already received much praise in the Polish press. Anna Tatarkiewicz called the novel “the first masterpiece in Slavic literature, perhaps even in European literature, in which the fate of the peasant attains the standing of human fate in all its tragic vastness.” Meanwhile, Krystyna Dabrowska hailed the novel as “A hymn in praise of life. . . . A paean to speech and the art of storytelling.”

So great to see Amazon.com continue this program and their support of very interesting projects and presses.

And since everything’s connected, here’s a link to the most recent episode of the Reading the World podcast which features Bill Johnston talking about the process of translating Stone Upon Stone.

Anyway, for anyone who hasn’t heard about this, Amazon.com announced on Monday the launch of AmazonCrossing, a publishing imprint that will be dedicated to publishing works in translation. These titles will be available through Amazon, through major wholesalers, and via the Kindle.

The first book they’re doing is The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo, which won the Prix Renaudot, and is translated from the French by Nicholas Elliott. Not a ton of info about the book itself, but here’s something:

Loosely based on the life of Olivier de Sanderval, a man who journeyed to Guinea to build an empire by conquering the hostile region of Fouta Djallon, the book exposes how Sanderval braves all dangers to build a railway that will bring modern civilization to Africa.

There is an interesting interview with the translator though, which has a bit more info:

Amazon.com: What was your initial impression of The King of Kahel?

Nicholas Elliott: I read it in one sitting, on a plane, and was immediately struck by Monénembo’s daring. The King of Kahel bows to no official positions on colonialism in creating a depiction of a land as terrifying as it can be mystifyingly comical. Monénembo’s sly way of comparing the conniving of the Paris bureaucracy with the ruthlessness of the princes of Fouta Djallon would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tightly wound into a thrilling story. But more than anything else, the images of a harsh and beautiful land and the madly ambitious men who fought for it haunt me to this day, nearly a year after I finished translating the book.

As the University of Nebraska did an earlier book of Monenembo’s—one that didn’t gain a ton of traction with the reading public. (But which did receive a solid “B” from ) Which is what makes this a very intriguing first selection . . . I’m sure the fact this won the Prix Renaudot played a huge factor, but regardless, without checking the Translation Database I’m going to guess that there were maybe a half-dozen books from African writers translated and published here in the U.S. last year. Maybe.

Although all this stuff about the book is cool, the real fun stuff to talk about in relation to this announcement is the effect this program will have on publishers, how people in the book business are going to perceive this, and what impact AmazonCrossing might have on literature in translation as a whole.

Before this press release came out (I knew about it a few weeks ago, since they asked me for a quote), I was half expecting a ton of outrage from various parts of the publishing world. Commercial publishers have a somewhat antagonistic relationship with Amazon.com to say the least, and are always worried that Amazon.com is going to try and become a publisher and have even more control over the book market than they currently do. And although we all know commercial publishers don’t really publish many works in translation, this is still an encroachment on their turf . . . And on the other side of the retail coin, I could envision indie booksellers—some of whom sell heaps of translated books, some of which hang up on me with a “we don’t carry those sorts of books” when I contact them about setting up a sales call—getting up in arms about potentially stocking titles with the logo of one of their biggest rivals on the spine.

I haven’t necessarily been trolling all the various litblogs, but everything that I’ve read (the main ones being for Daily Finance, and this article in the ) has been fairly neutral, more focused on simply explaining the program and not getting into too many potential implications.

The only critical piece that I’ve seen was which is incredibly stupid more or less an attack on a quote I made to the WSJ regarding “standard” payment rates for translators. It’s not at all worth taking down this particular post—which is based in the belief that translators are overpaid, a belief as moronic as the title of his blog—but I do want to clarify a bit re: my WSJ quote. When Jeffrey Trachtenberg called, he simply asked about normal payment rates for translators. This info is a bit tricky to come by, since it’s technically collusion for translators to discuss with each other what rates they charge. But based on experience, a lot of established translators ask for about $125/1000 words. Some get more, some get fucked. (And some unnamed publishers specialize in the low-ball fucking.) But what I want to make clear is that I have no idea if Amazon will be paying translators these amounts, or doing something more along the lines of a nice royalty share. (I’m pretty sure it will be the latter though, since that’s more in keeping with the Amazon Encore program.)

OK, backlash speculation aside, I think this program could actually do a lot for the perception and reception of international literature. It’s not like this cause is new to Amazon: for the past few years they’ve been systematically funding non-profit organizations specializing in literature in translation, such as the Center for the Art of Translation, PEN America’s Translation Fund, Words Without Borders, and Open Letter. (And just to disclaim: I’d be praising this program regardless of whether Amazon.com sponsored us or not.) Amazon’s stated goal is to make as many books available in as many formats to as many people as possible. And with so few translations making their way into English, this is an obvious place to expand . . .

My long-term interest in this program is two-fold: obviously, increasing the number of translated titles available to English readers is something I believe in strongly, also, I’m interested in seeing how Amazon’s marketing efforts could expand the overall awareness and appreciation for these books. As things currently stand, 80-85% of all works of literature in translation are published by smaller, indie, nonprofit, university presses—most of which have pretty small marketing budgets. And the big houses that do translations tend not to put a lot of money behind these books (they have other books with larger sales potential to focus on).

But Amazon.com . . . They don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money on marketing, since they already have all the necessary tools to push a book out to the fricking world. And what would be really interesting, is if they created some sort of World Literature portal where they could push the AmazonCrossing books alongside authors like Saramago or Garcia Marquez or Bragi Olafsson . . . something that would help serve as a way to promote the whole of translated literature. It’s quite possible that over time something like this could make a huge difference in how translations are perceived and purchased.

And going back to the production side of things for a moment, there are god only knows how many fully translated manuscripts that translators have been unsuccessful in placing. And I’m sure a lot of these people would be happy to forgo an advance in lieu of a better royalty rate just to finally see their work make its way into print . . .

So in essence, the program could result in the publication of more translations from more translators reaching more readers—all very good things . . .