From: spameimer@sf-boom.de   
      
   To no one's surprise, hardly any German SF/F-writers have been   
   translated for the English-speaking market. From my immediate knowledge,   
   of the current crop only three come to my mind: Andreas Eschbach, Markus   
   Heitz and Wolfgang Jeschke. I don't think that in general foreign   
   authors are translated into English a lot, so we Germans are not an   
   exception. It is therefore quite difficult for a German author to get   
   published in the US or the UK, as the "normal way" - having a manuscript   
   in German, finding a publisher willing to pay for translation and get a   
   contract accordingly - will in most of the cases not work or at least   
   very hard to achieve. Submission after paying for a translation in   
   advance by yourself is risky, not only are the costs considerable, the   
   chances to recuperate them are small and therefore the investment might   
   probably not yield any returns or if, then many years thereafter, as   
   manuscripts have the tendency to linger for some time.   
      
   The other, although slim chance might be that someone who, while not a   
   native-speaker, masters the English language to a sufficient degree,   
   invests time and energy in translation himself, and then invests some   
   money, although not as much as for paying a translator, for a   
   professional copy-editor to make the text readable. Again, an investment   
   is needed and the risk is there, but it is a bit smaller.   
      
   The subsequent question is if an American or British agent would be   
   willing to look at material written by a German author at all? The main   
   reason why American and British publishers don't really need to bother   
   with translations is the fact that they can lean on a multitude of   
   talented and busy native authors who undoubtedly write the best SF/F in   
   the world (I'm not kidding, I can compare). So there is no strong   
   motivation to look elsewhere, definitely there is no pressure or need to   
   get material from abroad. Of course, this is guesswork, but these   
   considerations alone will make any effort in this respect at least   
   risky, if not futile, and if not objectively so, then at least in the   
   mind of the prospective author who might regard the obstacles as quite   
   insurmountable.   
      
   Of course, I'm not writing this in order to bore you with a theoretical   
   treatise. As I'm one of those authors in question, I decided to put   
   another theory into test: if we have a more interconnected market now,   
   with the advent of amazon and ibooks as major distributors (I exclude   
   Google Books here, from the numbers I'm aware of, their impact is, so   
   far, negligible), why is it necessary to look for a foreign publisher at   
   all? And, if you don't want to go into self-publishing (because you   
   don't like the investment and are not too good in all technical issues   
   or in quality management or don't think that SP is the right way forward   
   in general), why not getting a German publisher to publish the   
   translated work himself, paying for the copy-editor etc. and using the   
   international opportunities to publish an ebook worldwide (and a   
   paperback e. g. through amazon's print-on-demand service)? Maybe even a   
   publisher who is willing to do some marketing, e. g. spending money on   
   ads in English-speaking genre-related publications?   
      
   Well, it's worth a try.   
      
   http://www.emperors-men.com/   
      
   I'll keep you posted how this works out. I don't know how it will, but   
   if one doesn't try, one will neither see failure nor success.   
      
   --   
   www.sf-boom-blog.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)