Though she needs little introduction to most of you, for those new to translation I am pleased to introduce today’s guest blogger, Corinne McKay. Corinne is a true champion of our profession, a coach and mentor to many looking to build their careers, and a self-published author. I am so pleased to host her today as she shares her experience in this last area, and encourages us to follow her excellent example.
Self-Publishing Options for Translators
As Lisa pointed out in her excellent series of posts on getting published, there are lots of routes to getting your name on the cover (or copyright page!) of a book. Traditional publishing, traditional self-publishing and print-on-demand (POD) are all open to literary translators and translators who want to write their own books, and each of these options has its pluses and minuses. At Lisa’s suggestion, I’d like to give you my perspective on self-publishing, based on my experiences publishing two editions of my book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator with another book in the works for late 2011.
Before you think about self-publishing, you have to give up a few preconceptions. Forget the term “vanity press.” Admittedly, print-on-demand and self-publishing houses print a lot of shockingly bad books. But lots of really successful books are also coming out of these houses too, and people are buying them. In the five years since the first edition of my book came out (from Lulu press, one of the larger print-on-demand houses), it has sold over 4,500 copies and generated over $25,000 in royalties. It’s for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and eBay, and in many brick and mortar stores as well. It’s been reviewed in mainstream publications such as The ATA Chronicle and MultiLingual magazine; I even received an e-mail from someone who found it in a library in Ireland. There are few places that self-published books can’t go in 2011.
Next, consider the benefits of self-publishing: higher royalties (25-75% as compared to 5-15% with a traditional publishing house), much greater control over the content and format of your book and complete control over the book’s price, and over how and where it is for sale. In exchange, you’ll be solely responsible for the success or failure of your book. You’ll be putting up a website, scheduling speaking engagements and signings, and sending out review copies. If, like most translators, you’re a self-reliant overachiever at heart, these tasks will be a welcome challenge rather than drudgery. In addition, unless you’re already a well-known author, you would probably be doing these tasks if you published through a traditional house as well, but in exchange for a much smaller slice of the book’s revenue.
From a practical standpoint, aspiring self-publishers have two main options: going through a traditional self-publishing company (two of the larger ones are United Graphics and Bookmasters) or going the print-on-demand route through a company such as Lulu. Both of these tracks require you to write the book, lay it out or pay someone to do the layout for you, design a cover or pay someone to design it for you, and then arrange for the book to be distributed and sold through the channels that you want.
Here’s where the cost/benefit analysis begins. With print-on-demand, you’ll have a very low up-front cost (Lulu currently charges under $200 for a distribution package that includes an ISBN, selling your book on Lulu and submitting your book to the major retail channels; Lulu also has free tools to help you create a cover and a PDF of your content) and you will earn a healthy share of the book’s sale price. For example, my book’s cover price is $19.95. When a copy sells from Lulu’s own website, I earn $10.00. When a copy sells through another retail outlet such as Amazon, I earn $3.75. If I purchase books for my own use, I pay between $7 and $10 a copy including shipping, depending on how many copies I order. The income I earn from Lulu is completely hands-off: they handle the order fulfillment, payment and shipping, and pay me by PayPal once a month. In addition, changing the text of a print-on-demand book is very quick and easy; you just upload a new PDF of your text and the next book that’s ordered will reflect those changes.
In preparation for publishing my next book (a compilation of entries from my blog, Thoughts on Translation), I’ve been doing some research into traditional self-publishing. For a 200 page book, most printers seem to charge between $3.00 and $5.00 per copy including shipping, assuming that you order 500-1,000 copies at a time. The math isn’t difficult: if you don’t mind storing the books and filling the orders yourself, you can raise your profit margin by quite a bit as compared with print-on-demand. The tradeoff is that you’ll have to work with a distributor to get your book on Amazon and in bookstores; you’ll also run the risk of having to dispose of a large quantity of books if you find a glaring error or typo or if your book doesn’t sell as well as you had hoped.
When I published How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, my husband and I did the layout ourselves using a free software package called LyX. Although you can generate a book manuscript using word processing software, professional layout software gives your book that “looks like a book” feel and is not hard to learn to use. For the first edition of my book, my husband designed the cover using a piece of artwork in the public domain; for the second edition I hired a graphic designer to create a cover image based on the first edition’s cover. This cost only a few hundred dollars and I was very happy with the result.
Overall I’ve been quite satisfied with Lulu and plan to continue using them in the future. The quality of their books is excellent and so is their international shipping and overall customer service. In addition, Lulu does not require any exclusivity agreements: I’m planning to purchase about 500 copies of my book from an outside printer for my own use, and this doesn’t conflict with any of Lulu’s policies.
If you’d like to self-publish a translation or an original book, the barrier to entry is very low. It seems to me that too many excellent translators are intimidated by the practical aspects of breaking into publication. My one-sentence message is: it’s a lot of work, but you can do it. You can go on Project Gutenberg right now and find a public domain book to translate. You can use LyX to lay out your translation, then use Lulu to create a cover, print your book and make it available for sale worldwide. You can even use a funding platform like Kickstarter to raise money to support your translation. And the product will be a translation that is truly yours. I think it’s time for more translators to take publishing into their own hands; instead of lamenting how few literary translations see the light of day, put one out there yourself!
I’d love to hear from you about your perspectives on the world of self-publishing and how it applies to translators!
Corinne McKay is a French to English translator based in Boulder, Colorado. Her book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator has helped over 5,000 translators launch or grow their freelance businesses and her blog Thoughts on Translation was selected as one of the top 25 blogs by a language professional in 2011. She is the current president of the Colorado Translators Association and the chair of the American Translators Association’s Public Relations committee.
