Publishing and National Pride

Nations are trying to break into the American book publishing market with translated works of some of their authors' books to highlight their country's singular identity.

From the piece in the New York Times...

The runaway success of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy suggests that when it comes to contemporary literature in translation, Americans are at least willing to read Scandinavian detective fiction. But for work from other regions, in other genres, winning the interest of big publishing houses and readers in the United States remains a steep uphill struggle.

Among foreign cultural institutes and publishers, the traditional American aversion to literature in translation is known as “the 3 percent problem.” But now, hoping to increase their minuscule share of the American book market — about 3 percent — foreign governments and foundations, especially those on the margins of Europe, are taking matters into their own hands and plunging into the publishing fray in the United States.

Increasingly, that campaign is no longer limited to widely spoken languages like French and German. From Romania to Catalonia to Iceland, cultural institutes and agencies are subsidizing publication of books in English, underwriting the training of translators, encouraging their writers to tour in the United States, submitting to American marketing and promotional techniques they may have previously shunned and exploiting existing niches in the publishing industry.