Squawk Radio
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Eloisa on the Mystery of How Potent Pleasures became De Geur van de Nacht, Ekstase der Liebe, and a bunch of other titles I can't type because I don't have the right fonts....
People often ask about where my books are translated, so I thought it would be fun to talk about it for a moment on Squawk. The first thing to know is that romance is popular all over the world (thank goodness!). Each squawker has a literary agent who handles our foreign sales as well as our American ones (although in some cases a publisher will handle foreign sales themselves). My agent has partners in places like Poland. The Polish literary agency then pitches my books to a Polish publisher, who commissions a translator and publishes an entirely different version of my book.
Supposedly they create new covers too, but the truth of that is that they often just reuse covers they had hanging around the back room. A case in point? Potent Pleasures in German! There it is, to the right. And while it's true that my heroine found herself in a compromising position on the ground, she was no gypsy and it wasn't in a barn! What's more, last time I checked, my books are set in the 1800s and that man is wearing a pair of Levis, or I'll eat my cowboy hat.
At any rate, things get more exciting when you're on your ninth or tenth book, because several foreign publishers are likely to want to publish your books. This summer my agent managed two auctions for the right to publish Much Ado about You and Kiss Me, Annabel, one in Spain and the other in England. Auctions are huge fun. For a few days, the two foreign publishers keep bidding against each other. So you get emails saying: "Good News" and "Up Again!" There was one lovely day this summer when I got an email with the subject heading "Are you sitting down?" That was the day that the battle between two English publishers escalated into a hardcover edition. I'm going to get my friends in England to buy loads so I can give them out on my website.
There are some very passionate romance readers abroad (I think we have quite a few reading this blog too). Lisa's Spanish publisher recently sent her on a tour of Spain, and since my favorite pair of shoes come from there, I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that my new publisher will have similarly fabulous ideas of how to treat their authors.
Most authors post foreign book covers on their sites. Anyone seen any particularly funny covers out there? Let's do some research! If you find a great one, let me know and I'll post a few on the blog today. Squawkers, how about your covers?
People often ask about where my books are translated, so I thought it would be fun to talk about it for a moment on Squawk. The first thing to know is that romance is popular all over the world (thank goodness!). Each squawker has a literary agent who handles our foreign sales as well as our American ones (although in some cases a publisher will handle foreign sales themselves). My agent has partners in places like Poland. The Polish literary agency then pitches my books to a Polish publisher, who commissions a translator and publishes an entirely different version of my book.
Supposedly they create new covers too, but the truth of that is that they often just reuse covers they had hanging around the back room. A case in point? Potent Pleasures in German! There it is, to the right. And while it's true that my heroine found herself in a compromising position on the ground, she was no gypsy and it wasn't in a barn! What's more, last time I checked, my books are set in the 1800s and that man is wearing a pair of Levis, or I'll eat my cowboy hat.
At any rate, things get more exciting when you're on your ninth or tenth book, because several foreign publishers are likely to want to publish your books. This summer my agent managed two auctions for the right to publish Much Ado about You and Kiss Me, Annabel, one in Spain and the other in England. Auctions are huge fun. For a few days, the two foreign publishers keep bidding against each other. So you get emails saying: "Good News" and "Up Again!" There was one lovely day this summer when I got an email with the subject heading "Are you sitting down?" That was the day that the battle between two English publishers escalated into a hardcover edition. I'm going to get my friends in England to buy loads so I can give them out on my website.
There are some very passionate romance readers abroad (I think we have quite a few reading this blog too). Lisa's Spanish publisher recently sent her on a tour of Spain, and since my favorite pair of shoes come from there, I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that my new publisher will have similarly fabulous ideas of how to treat their authors.
Most authors post foreign book covers on their sites. Anyone seen any particularly funny covers out there? Let's do some research! If you find a great one, let me know and I'll post a few on the blog today. Squawkers, how about your covers?
Eloisa James, 7:45 AM
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