This is the final text about translating and publishing our books in a foreign market, without direct money investing. For those who did not have the opportunity to get familiar with this concept in previous texts, here's what this is about:
There are platforms that connect authors and translators, whereby monetary compensation is distributed only after the book is sold. Most of these platforms will retain rights to exclusive sales of a translated work over a period of five years. After that, all the copyright to the translation belongs to the author. If you do not have the money to invest in a professional translation, then you really have nothing to lose. You can not know until you try, and if the book does not succeed, after five years you will have a translated manuscript and be free to offer it independently to foreign publishers.
In short: you do not have to pay for your book to be translated and published in the leading online bookstores.
At the end of this article, you will find links to my older texts which can be useful when you are preparing to decide which service you will use. These platforms are good but your choice brings much responsibility.
I already wrote about Babelcube and Fiberead services, and today we will speak about Italian platform Tektime. It is not a coincidence why I choose to write about these guys at the end. They are my favorite rev-share translation service, and I will try to explain why.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Almost like all others. The rights to translation have been kept for five years in order to give equal opportunity to all parties, and the money distribution works as follows:
So, as a writer - as more copies of books are sold, the higher your salary will be. Although it can look unfair, this principle protects translators from bad authors.
The first step is certainly registration on the site. After registration, you will have access to your user panel where you expect mostly standard options (with a few exceptions that I will emphasize later).
It is important that you know that the book is set up just like on other services. You will be asked to enter all details about it, as well as to determine the categories to which it belongs. In the end, the successfully submitted book should look like this.
Now the real fun begins. Do not wait for the translators to find you - take the first steps and find them. This is very easy through the "find a translator" option. As you can see from image below, translator search is very systematic and quality - in what I was convinced on my personal example.
After this, you will get a list of all available translators that meet the conditions that you defined in the search parameters. Be free to contact them and offer them your book. You can propose your works to up to 3 translatorsevery day. This really should not be a problem to you, because at this moment there are far more translators than the authors on the platform.
When you have exchanged the first messages and agreed to cooperate, very detailed steps are required for all the parties to complete, so the translation can be finished successfully.
First of all, you will have to sign the agreement, after which will translator finish the first 5% of book translation and offer it to you for validation. If you approve that, the translator will finish the rest of the book in the time frame specified by the agreement. Now, you are the one who initially approves the final translation, but the publisher will do it right after you – now this is really good and completely free proofing service.
So, you are ready to do it. The service will ask you for uploading the final epub file with cover design and translation included so here you have two option. You can buy this service from the Tektime as a publisher, or you can do it by yourself and submit the final file. I always vote for option two, not only because of the money saving but also because I think that authors deserve the freedom to visually shape their final work.
Also, Tektime recently introduced another very important service - the option to publish an audio book. Now with the translations of your ebooks, you can hire narrators to read them. Audio books are constantly gaining popularity so this option is another potential source of income.
HERE IS THE SUMMARY:
WEBSITE: https://www.traduzionelibri.it
PROS:
- Outstanding customer support
- Very detailed procedure of translation
- Audio book publishing
- Good base of translators
- They distribute ebooks and audiobooks in 170 different countries and through more than 60 distribution channels (Amazon and many others).
CONS:
- You have to pay for some services, but they are not mandatory
- You have to invest in marketing to get a visibility of your book - this is not a real CON - you must be aware that the market is huge and that having a translated work is not enough.
As always, I'm available for all questions and I'll be happy to answer them. If you are interested in this topic, I suggest you read some of the following texts as well:
How to translate and publish a book on a foreign market without any cost (part one)
How to convert your book in 7 easy steps