72 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
Soapbox
“In book publishing we’re witnessing a discriminating practice that has become increasingly
common in recent years.”Level the Playing Field
A Slovenian editor says withholding a
manuscript for translation is bad businessBy Andrej Ilc
The Booker shortlist was just
announced, and it includes The
Testaments. This is great news. It
means that the book is good.
But what it also means is that
the jurors were given the manu-
script ahead of publication, too.
How did security procedures
work in this case? I would rather not speculate, but let me just
say that this only made us even more furious.
I’m sure we all agree that every business is based on trust. If
you don’t trust your business partners, then why bother at all?
In the case of The Testaments, we were particularly disappointed
because we had initially been promised the manuscript in March
(just enough time to publish more or less simultaneously), only
to later be told that we’ll have to wait until September 12.
Why is this so crucial? We will lose the global promotional
momentum and lose face in the eyes of our readers, booksellers,
and librarians: the book is published, so where’s the Slovenian
version? Most of them will think that the publisher is rather
sloppy and slow.
The bottom line: we will sell less. And this is as important for
German publishers as it is for Slovenian, Slovakian, and Icelandic
publishers. Literary bestsellers are extremely rare. Therefore, one
must seize every selling opportunity, and publishing simultane-
ously with the original edition is an especially effective one.
Sure, there are those houses that will hire multiple translators
to finish the translation in two weeks, enabling the hasty pub-
lisher to publish the book just in time for the Christmas season.
But would you really want to see or read the result? Margaret
Atwood is a very fine author, one of the best. Her books deserve
a committed translator and proper editorial dedication. And this
takes time. So here is another factor that speaks against this
strategy—the author’s reputation is at stake.
It’s my firm conviction that this strategy should be urgently
reconsidered. Security reasons should be taken seriously, but
they should not be used (in)discriminately. All publishers
should be treated equally, no matter how big the territory. And
last but certainly not least: the new Margaret Atwood book is
coming; we should all really be full of positive anticipation
instead of losing time and nerves over such strategies.
I really don’t know what Margaret Atwood knows and thinks
about all this, but she once wrote these simple, yet strong words:
“I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only
one race—the human race—and that we are all members of it.”
If everybody in the publishing community understood what
these words really mean, we could all look on our Frankfurt days
with (even) more positive anticipation. ■The global publishing community is already looking ahead to
the coming Frankfurt Book Fair. You meet authors, partners,
colleagues, and friends there. You talk, complain, praise, dis-
cuss, and share. You feel an equal part of this book-loving family.
But is it really so idyllic?N
owadays, when everything is just a click away, people
around the world have come to expect the latest install-
ment of great TV series such as The Handmaid’s Tale or
Game of Thrones to be delivered to their screens more or less simul-
taneously with the original release, together with corresponding
subtitles in Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian, Slovenian.... There are
many people involved with the production, and the security risks
are extremely high, but still—the magic happens.
It is therefore somewhat surprising that in book publishing
we’re witnessing a discriminating practice that has become
increasingly common in recent years. In fact, this is now a sort
of a status symbol, which divides major from merely big or
important authors. At my Slovenian publishing company,
Mladinska Knjiga, we still receive Mr. Barnes’s or Mrs. Hawkins’s
or Mr. McEwan’s or Mr. Nesbø’s or Mr. Walliams’s new novels
way ahead of publication (Mr. Nesbø even kindly provides the
complete English translation for those who are not translating
from Norwegian!), whereas this is not the case with authors
(brands?) such as Dan Brown, John Green, or J.K. Rowling.
Even Harper Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, was strictly
embargoed until publication of the English edition. And now
Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments faces the same issue.
The reason given is always the same: security. We were told
by Atwood’s agency: “If this manuscript leaks, the consequences
are huge, and therefore we have to have a strategy that mini-
mizes the risk.”
A strategy? Some (well, most) of us are obviously not trust-
worthy. But there’s more. Initially a universal practice, this
“strategy” is not without exceptions now. For example, the German
version of The Testaments is scheduled for simultaneous publication
with the original—so is the Spanish one and the Italian one. Is this
then just a variation on a good old theme of “paying more”? (One
wonders how much of this is known to authors themselves, all fine
people, who are usually sincerely grateful to each of their publishers
from all around the world.) Andrej Ilc is an editor at Mladinska Knjiga, one of Slovenia’s largest publishers.