3 ms·
I know that among Dutch writers, it is a public secret that one does not have an English translation because the US (and rest of Anglosphere) is an interesting
by brnt 3y ago
I know that among Dutch writers, it is a public secret that one does not have an English translation because the US (and rest of Anglosphere) is an interesting market, but it's a requirement for getting on the NYT bestseller list. This means worldwide visibilty and worldwide sales. I never managed to get hard numbers from anyone, but reading between the lines, Dutch and American book markets appear to be on the same order of magnitude, not necessarily in favour of the US.
- ignite23 3y ago788 million us, vs 44 million, taking top google hits.
- AlbertCory 3y agoI've wondered about that as an author, actually: Given how little Americans read books, might there non-English-speaking countries where there are more book readers than the US? It would be simple to get a BAD translation of my books into Spanish, say, but a good translation would cost me a lot. And I wouldn't know how good it is without showing it to several other native Spanish-speakers.
- andrehacker 3y agoI was surprised that some author said that on the Dutch TV show "Lubach" earlier this year. He stated that the (absolute) number of copies sold to get in the top list of the Dutch market is about the same as the number of copies that gets you in a NYT list. He explained this by saying "Americans don't read much" and you seem to imply the same. But it appears that in the US about 300,000 titles are published per year (2013 data) versus 16,000 in the Netherlands. So is this an apples-to-apples comparison ? (source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_...)
- brnt 3y agoIt wasn't about the size in terms of titles, but total market in currency, AFAIK.