The sale of translation rights often forms a large part of the work of a publisher’s
rights department; with reductions in licensing income from areas such as paperback
rights, they have taken on greater importance and may be sought as part
of the publisher’s overall package of rights, particularly if a large advance is
being sought by the author or the author’s agent. However, translation rights
may not always be granted, particularly if the agency has a specialist department
for handling such rights. Literary agents often work through a network
of subagents in individual overseas markets; in such cases, the subagent’s
commission is deducted from the overall commission deducted by the author’s
agent from revenue earned.
Translations of English language books tend to dominate the market, perhaps
hardly surprising when it was confirmed in 2004 that 40% of all new titles
produced were English language original titles; the accessibility of the English
language makes English books easier to assess than those in many other
languages and translators tend to be easier to find. In addition to this, Anglophone
publishers have the advantage of long experience in placing their rights
abroad, and have a stable of well-known authors of literary and popular fiction
as well as non-fiction and academic writers.
While the aim of placing translation rights is certainly to generate welcome
additional revenue, there is also the motivation of bringing the book to a wider
readership. Here there may be some difference in the method of operation
between academic and trade publishers.
Some academic authors are keen that their books should be licensed for
translation less for financial reasons than to ‘spread the word’, particularly if
they are writing in a field where they feel that information is badly needed
in the poorer countries of the world. Examples here might include books on
medicine, economic development, new business techniques and aspects of technology.
A rights department in an academic publishing house may therefore
be prepared to invest time in arranging a licence for a nursing book in Nepal
or a book on rural development to Malaysia, often following up contacts