I feel blessed in this regard because German is my mother language, and translating my own books is an easy task for me. However, there are three great options for uni-lingual English-speaking authors available now in German-speaking countries. You might ask why to let your book translate into German and sell it over there:
- Germans are avid readers
- Germany has a population of over 80 million
- Book sales volume is 40% of that of the USA
- Millions of German speakers in Austria, Switzerland, and the rest of the world
- Germany is the third-largest ebook market
- Books are higher priced in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland – good for authors!
If you are entertaining the idea to exploit language rights as a self-publisher, consider both, market size but also the ease of publishing. For instance, it would be fantastic to be able to do this with Mandarin or Arabic – which are spoken by billions of people. But right now, you’re better off getting a foreign rights agent to try and sell those rights, rather than attempting to self-publish in these Middle East and Asian languages. Germany should be the first choice for self-publishing in translation due to the growing e-reader base on Amazon.de and Tolino-Thalia-Weltbild.
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Finding and Working With a Translator
If funds are no issue, hire a professional and recommended translator for your book. The second (inexpensive) method would be to let Google Translation or BabelCube do the job and then hire a German native speaker (teacher or other languages professional) to edit the translation. Or you can band with a translator and exercise the “royalty split translation model”. Let’s look into these three options:
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Royalty-Split Translator
In order to keep the translation cost, there is a royalty split model for translation: Your translation is free, but your translator will get a certain percentage of your book sales. Many translators are looking for ways to be more creatively involved in their finished product. The royalty split can be better financially in the long run and you get a marketing partner in the language of translation. This means that you get your emails for review pitches, blog interviews etc. translated. A business model that resembles a real partnership:
All the ongoing work of building the book in the market is shared between the author and the translator. You can trust the work of the translator more as they won’t get paid unless the book is good enough to sell. They have a vested interest in making the work the best it can be. The risk is split between you and there is no upfront payment, so it’s easy to try things out. It certainly needs a written contract – but everything else only works when there is trust on both sides.
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Working Directly With Your Translator
You can find and hire translators through one of the many translation associations and professional bodies online. Here is a list of notable translators organizations around the world I found on Wikipedia.
No matter in which language the translation will be, when working with a translator, they will ask you questions (hopefully they do!). These are necessary for the translator (and for you too) in order to choose the right words, to provide the best meaning, and to retain the original thought of the author. As translations are a months-long work, you might receive a tremendous bill at the end.
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BabelCube Offers a Royalty-Split Model Too
You can also use BabelCube – for any of the 15+ languages and royalty split deals. They offer a distribution platform and take 15% royalty and their translator/rights holder split varies on the number of books sold. There are no upfront costs – just share the royalties! Choose your translator – or a team of them. Authors will be able to sell their book in world languages through 100s of online retail channels and subscription services.
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File Formats and Distribution
BabelCube will enable you to convert the book into the different file formats for the various sales channels, publish it, and update things like pricing. BabelCube distributes your book to all its channels that support the book’s language. Their 300+ sales channel include the global online retailers, such as Amazon and Apple, and local retailers specializing in regions. You can request assistance from the translator(s), as desired.
Revenue share is on a sliding scale – towards the author. As more books are sold, as more the author earns.
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German-Language Rights Sales
If you want to outsource the German-language rights only for a couple of years and let the German publisher pay for the translation: exploiting dormant international rights became easier than ever for author-publishers. Writers can now engage with readers and licensees worldwide without even leaving their office. Authors and publishers can license their English-language or translation rights to traditional publishers located in Germany.
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Two Global Rights Network Platforms
Selling the rights to your books can be a lucrative business, putting local versions of your writing into the hands of readers all around the world. The predominance of book fairs and back-and-forth negotiations between rights agents and editors left a gap for literary rights-holders.
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“Now there are online marketplaces for the 365 days 24/7 trading of book rights available. Publishers of all sizes, including self-publishers, can make their book’s rights available for sale from several online profiles. It allows authors to sell their rights based on their own terms, growing income, and in many cases, creating totally new income streams!”
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What are these new Digital Platforms Doing?
Automated rights selling systems, allow you to make titles available for rights transactions – worldwide – with little up-front work! Set up your prices for rights by language, territory, format (paperback, hardcover, ebook or audio) and length of the deal. Swap out the standard contract for your own – if you choose.
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Detail Your Book’s Rights
Decide to use the digital platform’s contract – or use your own. You even receive helpful hints from the digital platforms if you’re using your own contract. At PubMatch, for example, you create multipliers for different formats and contract lengths. The multipliers will tell the system to increase the amount you will receive for a specific format or length.
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Choose the language, exclusivity, territory, formats available (choose one or all), contract lengths available (choose one option or many), and other contract terms like print run and royalty percentage. Detail your individual rights available for individual titles or groups of titles that have all the same rights available. The base price you assign will be your minimum price and will go up – based on your multipliers- and what formats you’ve made available.
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IPR License is an online global publishing network where you can find authors, book publishers, agents and book rights professionals from across the globe. It is a Marketplace for publishers to trade foreign rights globally. The platform offers the opportunity to monetize or find the best new content in a global marketplace. It also acts as a copyright hub, making it easier to locate copyright holders to clear permission for use of their work.
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Other Considerations When Selling Abroad
You may choose a different title in German than the English language version would be translated. Traditional publishers generally use a different title and often even a totally very different cover. A good example is Hillary Clintons latest book. Scroll through lists of German bestselling titles in your genre to get a good overview before deciding on whether to use your “old” book cover design or background image.
Always purchase your own ISBN. This shows you are the publisher! You can buy your ISBN in your own homeland as it is valid worldwide. Make also sure that:
- The cover fits European taste (depending on genre)
- The book description is edited and proof-read by your German editor
- The book text is, of course, translated to German
- The book already has a few reviews
- You set the Euro price
- You need to have a German-language author page on authorcentral.amazon.de (separate from amazon.com!)
Depending on the distributor, you may or may not need to add VAT (the stores will always add a 19 % VAT for ebooks or 7% for print versions, before showing the price to the customer).
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POD and Distribution in Germany
German bookstores won’t order from Amazon. Place your book to Amazon.de by yourself – or place it on your Amazon account that you use for other books in your homeland. Use the services of European book distributors to let them deliver books and ebooks directly to local retailers and German language online stores. You can take these distributors for your books to Kobo, Apple iBooks or to libraries. Popular European booksellers are Weltbild.de, Weltbild.ch, Weltbild.at, Hugendubel, Thalia.de, Thalia.at, Thalia.ch, Buecher.de, eBook.de, Mayersche.de, Bol.de, Osiander.de, Buch.de, Buch.ch, or Libris.nl. Ask your distributor for direct links, and where exactly your book is sold.
Instead of .com most companies and online retailers in Europe use the country-specific names for their website, such as .de is for Germany, .at for Austria, .nl for Netherland and .ch for Switzerland. Tolino ebook Readers are in Germany (and their neighboring) countries what Kindle is in North America.
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Better Conditions Than Amazon …
Tolino media is Tolino’s new self-publishing platform. Publish your book now with Tolino media. Publish quickly and easily your eBook in just three steps: writing, uploading and it’s immediately available in online shops of major German, Austrian, and Swiss booksellers such as Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel and many others.
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Use the Book Trade Experience of These Partners
In addition, you benefit from top conditions such as 70% author’s revenue (70% of the net sales price) for titles from € 2.99 (under € 2.99 you get 40%), no costs, a monthly statement, an overview of daily sales, a simple operation of the software, direct contact with partners in the Tolino world and much more.
Questions? Go to https://www.tolino-media.de/FAQ
Distributors:
- eBookPartnership (English)
- Draft2Digital (English) D2D converts your manuscript for free! into epub and in mobi format
- ePubli.de (German – using the ePubli.co.uk page, instructions can be easily followed).
The ePubli staff speaks English and you can email for help which is great. How to convert your manuscript into epub is explained on their website, where you can download their tool for free. Or you can order to have your manuscript converted to epub for 80 Euro.
After loading the ePub file and all the same information as is usually needed (but in German), ePubli/eBookPartnership/Draft2Digital will distribute to various stores and online retailers. Print-on-demand, as well as selling and distributing through them is the same as with any other distributors in North America, such as Smashwords or BookBaby. You pay a revenue share. An exception is eBookPartnership where you pay a small yearly fee (ca. $30 per book), but never a revenue share!
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Genres and Keywords
Ask your translator to explain you the categories and keywords on Amazon.de. They don’t necessarily translate directly. Also, let him or her identify the best keywords. And use Amazon.de’s book and ebook site to dig deeper: Look for similar books in your genre, their covers, prices, editorial reviews, and book descriptions. At Amazon.de are also far fewer categories. Try to get the help from native German speakers or your translator to set up your Amazon.de Central account with a translated description.
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Fixed Price Law = Buchpreisbindung
It means legal requirements for books to be priced the same on all stores in Germany, which makes it difficult to run price promotions. It’s against the German reader “culture” to buy books only due to a low price. They rather look for excellent writing. This also stops the Amazon’s deep discounting, protecting German retailers. Sales Tax (almost 20%) is always included in the book price, so you need to calculate it in! As you can see print versions are in all countries much lower taxed then eBooks.
Germany:
VAT/sales tax on e-Books: 19 % – on print books: 7 %
Austria:
VAT/sales tax on e-Books: 20 % -on print books: 10 %
Switzerland:
VAT/sales tax on e-Books: 8 % – on print books: 2,5 %
Speaking of rules: Should you create a German website (hosted in Germany) the owner of this website has to be mentioned on the site, as well as the postal address (city, street, civic # and phone or email). In case you are wondering… when you read the “Impressum”. Some German authors and companies even post this on their social media sites.
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Print and eBook Formatting
My advice: Never, ever use an English-speaking formater or book lay-outer to design your German ebook and even more important your print version. German words are VERY long, and at the end of almost every line, they need to be split properly. The German language has different hyphenation rules which means that your print formatting needs specific language settings in order to flow correctly and still have the straight line edged formatting.
It took almost a year, two book-formaters/lay-outers, dozens and dozens of emails and corrections until the book could go to print. In the end, I would have been way better off to hire a German lay outer in the beginning. And certainly a German book editor.
I was so far not successful to find a German pre-editing program similar to Grammarly, EditMinion or PaperRater. Translators can be extremely professional, and a great help for the “cultural” part of the translation, but an edit is still necessary to fine-comb your manuscript before sending it out to the lay-outer.
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Print Sizes
German printing is in centimeters, so if you’re using 5×8 or 6×9 inches for a POD, you will now have to use centimeters if you use German print distributors. 6×9 inches, for example, is 15 cm x 23 cm. Non-Fiction are mostly 13,5 x 20,5 cm. Before you decide for a book size ask your print book lay-outer which sizes in your genre are usually chosen by authors, publishers, and bookstores in German-speaking countries.
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How to Upload Your eBook to Tolino
Tolino Media is the self-publishing initiative of the German Tolino group, consisting of nearly all the major bookstores, except Amazon, of course. They offer a 70 percent share and 40% for books less than Euro 2.99 priced. However, you need a German address and bank account. If you can manage this your earnings will be higher per book, as distribution costs are eliminated. More details on their site: http://bit.ly/2HDciKg.
Just copy and paste the text of the Tolino Media website platform in Google translation, and you get the instructions in English. Tolino upload works very similar to uploading on Amazon.
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Marketing for German Language Books
Start with opening a separate account for Twitter, Google+ and Facebook to find as many potential German readers as possible. Check out social media sites of folks in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and follow them. Go to their “Followers” and “Following” and pick potential readers to add to your own account. Share their posts and “like” them. On Goodreads watch out for readers of German-language books, and start a giveaway of your ebook version – the same for giveaways at Amazon. In the section “Want to Read” place as many German books as possible into your virtual “shelves” and most important, write reviews!
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Website/Blog in the German Language
This is a must! Even if you don’t speak the language, you can post excerpts from your book, or write short articles about your publishing experiences, or place your book trailer or slides, or images that fit the genre of your book. Short blog articles can be translated easily with Google translator. Place a list of your sales channels – or even better a Universal Link – on every page of your website or blog where readers in Europe can purchase your book,
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Reader Reviews
Focus on reviews through existing networks in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria from your newsletter email list or your LinkedIn or Goodreads friends. Ask them if they would like a review copy. Those who respond positively, send an ebook or a mobi file or ePub files for Kobo, Nook, and iBooks. This is a slow approach to reviews, but giving books away is always a good start if you have no audience.
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Book Review Sites & Reader Communities
“Lovely Books”, “Was Liest Du” and “Vorablesen” is the German equivalent of Goodreads (or even better : )
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Lovely Books is online since 2006 and has 170,000 members and 4,500 authors.
Vorablesen.de
This is a service that allows cover testing and votes, pre-reading of samples and then the chance to win the ebook in advance of publication. It’s run on a points system which incentivizes reviewers and bloggers to add reviews quickly and on multiple platforms. Vorablesen is aimed at readers and they have over 10,000 active reviewers out of 36,500 users. Their users are mostly women who read over 35 books a year.
Vorablesen is a valuable service, offering help for authors on questions about their book during the writing process. Authors can get feedback from readers on cover design, style, and characters, and receive early writing critique. All the services include a report with data to help you with the launch of your book.
Was Liest Du is another reader community with almost 20,000 members. WLD encourages their members to write book reviews. Members can receive books via raffles. They also have a points system which incentivizes reviewers and bloggers to add book reviews.
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The editorial staff for Indie Publishing (a project of the German trade magazine Buchreport) regularly publishes reviews of self- and indie published titles in the German language. Their target: to make authors heard that are having a hard time in a market dominated by large publishers. The editors decide which titles are reviewed – but authors and small publishers can always propose their books.
The service is free, the books must be available in printed form from any German bookstore (no Createspace-only editions). The reviews are then published in the “Indie-Katalog” which is produced and distributed in digital and printed editions.
Draft2Digital, the US-based book distributor (which is delivering to Tolino shops too!), provides a fantastic new marketing tool for authors: You now have the option to add store specific marketing links to all your e-books uploaded to them. Stores usually don’t allow adding links to other stores. However, D2D’s universal link includes all sales links to your book – worldwide.
Tolino stores do promotions as well, and it’s these promotions that work best, just like official Kindle deals usually work better on Amazon than external deals. To get them, ask your distributor. The easiest way though is to contact Tolino Media, Tolino’s self-publishing service.
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Conclusion: While every child learns English in school in Austria, Germany, and in Switzerland, they are often too lax to read English-language books. But reading they do – a lot! What better than to translate your English books into German and publish it there.
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