![]() ![]() What they want: Fiction and literary nonfiction Notes: They provide Ros Schwartz’s excellent guidelines for translators submitting a book proposal. ![]() What they want: Literary fiction translations of fiction of the past 40 years narrative non-fiction.īooks: Endlandby Tim Etchells, The Taiga Syndrome by Christina Rivera Garza (translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana) and Proleterka by Fleur Jaeggy (translated by Alistair McEwen) Who they are: A crowd-funded publisher of contemporary writing. Considering how quickly a virus can travel around the world, it seems a shame that the riches of global literature are still so inaccessible. I was a little shocked to learn recently that translation is only 3% of annual publishing in the USA. This list is not just for writers and translators, either, but readers who want to find a source of literature in translation. To wit, here are 20 of the less-shy publishers of literary fiction and translation. If I were looking to publish my own work, I’d skip the middle man and toddle over to Smashwords, where my memoir about Saudi living Teacher, We Girls! is simmering along nicely with more than 50 sales! However, at the moment I’m sitting on a hot bet-a translation the Sizzlingest Socialist Comedy of the Decade-and feel that if only I can get close enough to one of these secretive publishing birds I should be able to lure it off its branch long enough to gmake friends and let me into its special flock. Ordinarily, self-publishing seems like a better bet. Such is the sorry state of affairs, and no wonder writers are sad. But then there are the smaller, more sociable niche publishers-the litter-inhabiting wrens-who provide detailed submissions requirements, with the caveat that they only have five staff and millions of manuscripts coming in every minute and can only publish half a book a year and please don’t fax or email them and also they can’t reply to anyone and can’t really justify the cost of reading a single paragraph of your blather. Any unsolicited manuscripts, proposals or query letters that we receive will not be returned, and RarissimaAvis is not responsible for any materials submitted,” which is publishing legalese for ‘Bog off bumface’. Once you’ve clicked that link, you scroll to the bottom of the contacts page, down, down, down past all the people the publisher would rather to talk to: readers, booksellers, publicity professionals, lawyers, undertakers… finally, at the bottom of that page you will see a message addressed to you: “RarissimaAvis does not accept unsolicited submissions. First, they make you to scroll to the bottom of the home page to find a ‘contact us’ link (in the tiniest possible font size, in the faintest feasible color). ![]() Mid-level publishers can’t quite reach those tranquil heights so they use a different strategy they lead you away from the nest with a series of clever feints. When they see you coming, they fly to the highest tree top where you have no way of reaching them without abseiling equipment and a flight suit. The biggest publishers don’t even bother mentioning submissions. Writers, in their view, are the moral equivalent of blood-sucking poachers who will wring their necks and wear their beaks as nose rings.Īfter a week of trawling through inhospitable websites/jungles, I’ve noticed some patterns in this avoidant behavior. Like the endangered Ribbon-tailed Astrapias of Papua New Guinea, a publisher would much prefer isolation foraging in its native jungle habitat than having to deal with unknown authors. If there’s one group of people who have already perfected the art of ‘social distancing’, it’s publishers. ![]()
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