Re: Re: Hillary Clinton in China

I've had my computer books translated into more languages than I can count. My publishers have all done the negotiations, and they're all pretty straightforward licenses with advance+royalty. I can't ever think of the question of accuracy of translation coming up in the contracts. Some of the translations have been pretty bad, not due to censorship but more due to the translators' unfamiliarity with the idioms I use or the technical field. We just sigh and hope we can get a better translator next time and maybe get the message through that it's OK with us if they send us questions.

> I was surprised reading how little the Chinese publication rights
> went for -- something like $20,000, according to the New York Times.

Translation advances are low because the publisher also has to pay the translator, and because it's a rare book that's got as big a market in translation as it did in the home country. If the book does well, it's not unheard of for the royalties to to earn out the advance and pay more.

-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711
johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, 
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail