The Make Books Travel Podcast

Today’s guest is Ana Lotts-Nicolau of Nemira Publishing House in Romania. Ana has had an impressive career so far: she currently is the CEO of Nemira, was for many years a member on the Board of the Romanian Publishers’ Association, and if that wasn’t enough on her plate already, in 2021 Ana founded the first audiobook platform on the Romanian market in partnership with her brother Radu Nicolau.

Show Notes:

• Ana's book recommendation:

- The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

• About Ana:

Ana Lotts-Nicolau was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania. She received her bachelor degree in French and European law at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2010, and a second bachelor degree in Romanian law from the University of Bucharest in 2011. Pursuing a path in publishing, she concluded an MA in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University in 2014.

In 2015 she became the CEO of Nemira Publishing House and a member on the Board of the Romanian Publishers’ Association (AER) – a position held between 2015 and 2022. 

In 2021 she founded a second business in partnership with her brother, Radu Nicolau, the first audiobook platform on the Romanian market – AudioTribe. 

Today I’m speaking with Yasmina Jraissati, owner of Raya Agency for Arabic Literature. Yasmina and I covered many different topics, including her beginnings as a literary agent and how one particular Frankfurt Book Fair played an essential role, the current publishing and bookselling landscape in Lebanon where she resides most of the time, the challenge brought on by piracy in the Arab-speaking publishing market, the position of audiobooks in Arabic, and much more.

Show Notes:

• Yasmina's book recommendation:

- Foundation by Isaac Asimov

• About Yasmina:

Yasmina Jraissati has a PhD in Philosophy and Cognitive sciences (2009). She established RAYA Agency for Arabic Literature, which has been promoting high quality Arabic literature on the international scene for translation and adaptation rights since 2004.

In 2020, Yasmina joined Storytel, the Swedish-based audiobook streaming platform, as a publishing manager for the MENA region.

It’s been a while since I recorded and published the previous episode. Landing back on my feet after my 5-week trip to Europe around the London Book Fair was a bit more challenging this time, due to some lingering fatigue after I caught Covid at the fair, like many others. Luckily that’s all behind me now! 

Today I’m speaking with Sophie Langlais, literary agent at #BAM - Books and More Agency in Paris. We discussed many topics, including the rise of literary agents in France, where the publishing landscape was pretty reluctant to embrace this role for a long time, bringing new translations of classics to the market, and the upcoming book fair season.

Show Notes:

• Sophie's book recommendation: 

- Stardust by Léonora Miano 

• About Sophie: 

Sophie Langlais was born in 1982 and has been reading a lot ever since. After working for two years in London at the French Book Office, she joined the foreign rights department at Gallimard; then the two independent publishing houses Les Arènes and l’Iconoclaste, where she sold rights (for Adeline Dieudonné’s La vraie vie, for instance) and acquired books (such as M by Antonio Scurati). She is now a literary agent at #BAM in France, with partner Marie Lannurien.

I wanted to alert you before you listen to today’s interview with Les Argonautes Editeur founder Katharina Loix Van Hooff that Russia comes up a couple of times during our conversation. We mention it in the context of European literature, and more precisely because Katharina has acquired the French rights in two novels written by Dutch author Marente de Moor. Marente used to live in Russia and one of the two novels is set in there. 

Please note that this interview was recorded prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and keep this in mind as you’re listening. Otherwise it may strike you as insensitive and incomprehensible that we do not mention the ongoing war. 

While I can’t wait to see many publishing friends and colleagues again in person soon, my thoughts are with the people of Ukraine. I’ve already expressed my thoughts and concerns about the Russian invasion in 2 Seas Agency’s March newsletter, and have published an article on our website, which links a list of humanitarian organizations one can donate to. 2 Seas Agency has made a donation to Médecins sans frontières/Doctors without Borders.

Show Notes:

• Katharina's book recommendation:

- The Sweet Indifference of the World by Peter Stamm

• About Katharina:

Katharina Loix Van Hooff has been working in publishing for twenty years. Born in Berlin, she attended the Berlin Journalism school and went on to study comparative literature and history in Brussels, Berlin, Washington D.C. and Paris all while working for German newspapers and radio, amongst others reporting extensively from Russia and Ukraine.

After important editing projects for a German publisher and her own novel published with Hanser Verlag, she took up a a Master's degree in Politique éditoriale in Paris (Villetaneuse-Paris XIII University) and worked several years as an agent for Anna Jarota Agency in Paris.

In her function as responsible of the foreign literature department at Gallimard, she accompanied authors like Orhan Pamuk, Amos Oz, Ludmila Ulitskaya, Bernhard Schlink and Peter Handke.

In the summer of 2021 she founded Les Argonautes Éditeur, an independent publishing house focusing on European translated literature. She currently develops an innovative and interactive internet project associated with the publishing house and supported by the city of Paris. The idea is to promote European literature to new audiences.

Today’s interview features Penny Hueston, who is Senior Editor at Text Publishing in Melbourne, Australia as well as a literary translator from the French.

Independent publisher Text Publishing has been championing translations from languages around the world since it started out in 1994. And Penny is passionate about her work as a translator.

I was looking forward to speaking with her about these two subjects, that are at the heart of this podcast.

Show Notes:

• Some of the books mentioned by Penny: 

- Olga Tokarczuk, Flights, The Books of Jacob, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

- Peter Singer’s work

- Yan Lianke's work

- Cory Taylor, Dying

- Akuch Kuol Anyieth, Unknown: A Refugee’s Story

- Fiona Murphy, The Shape of Sound

• About Penny:

Penny Hueston is Senior  Editor at Text Publishing and a literary translator from the French. Her translations include novels by Emmanuelle Pagano (One Day I’ll Tell You Everything), Patrick Modiano (Little Jewel), Sarah Cohen-Scali (Max) and Raphaël Jerusalmy (Evacuation).

She has translated six books by Marie Darrieussecq—All the Way, Men, Being Here: The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker, Our Life in the Forest, The Baby, and Crossed Lines.

She has been shortlisted for the JQ-Wingate Prize, the Scott Moncrief Prize, and twice for the New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize.

- The Spy and the Traitor (Crown, 2019) and Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy (Crown, 2020) by Ben Macintyre

- The Mitford Murders (series) (Minotaur Books) by Jessica Fellowes 

• About Outi

Outi Karemaa (born 1969) is an experienced Chief Executive with a long history of working in the publishing business. She is a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) focused on history from the University of Helsinki.

Outi started her career in the publishing business 1998 and worked at Edita Publishing as a Publishing Manager and then as a Publishing Director. In 2010 she started as a CEO of Metsäkustannus, which is a publisher of magazines and books.

In 2019 Outi started as a CEO at book publisher Minerva. After the biggest book publisher of Finland WSOY (Werner Söderström Ltd.) bought Minerva a year ago, her title has been a Publisher. Minerva is nowadays an imprint of WSOY, so Minerva still has its own publishing list. Minerva’s main areas are fiction, general non-fiction, as well as gift and hobby books and books for children. Outi lives in Helsinki with her family and a very social cat.

Today’s guest is Amélie Louat, whom some of you may know from her time at the French independent publishing house Editions Zulma. Amélie did something that I believe is incredibly courageous: during the pandemic, she quit her job at Zulma, moved away from Paris with her family to a small town in Brittany, and opened an independent bookstore. I had so many questions for her, not only about how this major life change unfolded, but also about her bookstore, since she is the very first bookseller I had on the podcast.

Show Notes:

• Amélie's book recommendations: 

- Voyage au bout de l'enfance by Rachid Benzine (Le Seuil, 2022) 

- The River by Peter Heller (Knopf, 2019; French edition La Rivière, Actes Sud, 2021) 

• About Amélie: 

Amélie Louat is the owner and founder of the bookstore La Grande Evasion in La Gacilly (Brittany). She spent 15 years working for independent French publishers, including 12 years for the innovative literary publisher Zulma. There, she acquired French rights of international authors, she created a non fiction series and she developed translation deals for Zulma’s authors all over the world. Among the authors she worked with are Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir (Iceland), Hubert Haddad (France), Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès (France), Dany Laferrière (Haïti), Marcus Malte (France), Shoshana Zuboff (USA), Zhang Yueran (China), Hwang Sok-yong (South Korea). 

In 2021, she left Paris in order to create her own bookshop in La Gacilly, Brittany: 80 m2, around 6000 titles, book clubs, concerts, writing workshops, meetings with authors and passionate talks with her clients are now her daily life. Among books, La Grande Evasion also exhibits limited printruns of original illustrations from local artists. 

• About La Grande Evasion: 

La Grande Evasion (in English: The Great Escape) is an independent bookstore created by Amélie Louat in La Gacilly, Brittany. It opened in May 2021. All kind of books are represented in the 80m2 shop, featuring around 6,000 titles: from high literature to comics, from artistic and coffee table books to social sciences, from graphic children's literature to cookbooks. 

Along with books, limited editions of illustrations and a small selection of notebooks and cards are proposed. More than a shop, La Grande Evasion aims to be a place to talk, to meet authors, illustrators and translators. 

La Grande Evasion is supported by several partners, from public institutions to private companies or organizations: among them are Editions Zulma, l’ADELC and Initiative France. 

La Grande Evasion : 21, rue La Fayette, 56 200 La Gacilly, France – contact@lagrandeevasion-librairie.fr

Today’s guest is Manami Tamaoki, Director of Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc in Tokyo. We recorded this interview a little while ago, when Manami just got out of a true virtual meeting marathon that took place before, during and after the Frankfurt Book Fair. I did not envy her! 

I just wanted to mention that at some point during the interview, Manami talks about the Swedish bestseller titled Smart Phone Brain, which was indeed as she indicates the bestselling book of the year in Japan, and topped several year-end lists. However, Manami would like to correct that it has won one award, and not three awards as she mentions during the interview. 

Show Notes

• A selection of Manami's book recommendations:

- The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity 

- The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World 

- The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It 

- The Joy Of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage 

- Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words

• About Manami

Manami is Director for Tuttle-Mori Agency, the leading literary agency based in Tokyo, Japan. She oversees the publishing business and relationships for the agency between the US, UK, Europe, Scandinavia and other territories around the world. 

Prior to becoming a Director, she was General Manager of the agency, as well as Head of the Nonfiction Department. 

As a co-agent selling into Japan, she works on numerous best-selling authors including Carlo Rovelli, Spencer Johnson, Adam Grant, Angela Duckworth, Susan Cain, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Kelly McGonigal, Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, Yanis Varoufakis, Muhammad Yunus, Thomas Friedman, John Carreyrou. 

She represents Ichiro Kishimi, Shunmyo Masuno, Thomas Lockley and other bestselling authors from Japan. She has been a featured speaker and panelist at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Japan Audiobook Association, and interviewed by an award winning author for his book about publishing professionals behind the scene, as well as prominent business magazines on being a Japanese agent in the international publishing market for twenty-nine years.

Today’s guest, Stella Soffia Jóhannesdóttir, had the pleasure of hosting one of the few in-person fellowships of this year, back in September, in her capacity as director of the Reykjavík International Literary Festival. Besides this role, she is also acquisitions editor for Storytel in Iceland.

I did some homework in preparation for my interview with Stella, and found that Storytel currently has 1.7 million subscribers in 25 markets with around 700,000 titles globally. Those numbers are quite mind-boggling!

• Stella's book recommendations:

- Cemetery of the Sea by Aslak Nore (Aschehoug, Norway; forthcoming in English with MacLehose Press)

- The Mark by Fríða Ísberg (Forlagið, Iceland; not yet sold to an English language publisher to date as far as we can tell)

- The Snow Sister by Maja Lunde (Kagge, Norway; not yet sold to an English language publisher to date as far as we can tell)

• About Stella:

Stella Soffía Jóhannesdóttir is the director of the Reykjavík International Literary Festival and acquisitions editor for Storytel in Iceland. Prior to working for Storytel, Stella worked in acquisitions for Forlagið. Stella was a part of the team that organized Iceland, Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2011 and she has been working for the Reykjavík International Literary Festival since 2009. She lives in Reykjavík, Iceland.

• Further show notes:

- Translation subsidies and travel grants from Iceland: https://www.islit.is/en/grants/

- General information about the fellowship program of the Reykjavík International Literary Festival: https://bokmenntahatid.is/en/reykjavik-fellowship-program-2021/

- Christmas Book Catalogue: bokatidindi.is

Today’s guest, Edward Nawotka, is the international and bookselling editor of Publishers Weekly and co-founder of Publishers Weekly en Español. He’d just returned from a trip to the Madrid Book Fair which we’ll discuss, as well as Publishers Weekly en Español, the state of independent bookselling in the US, and the biggest shifts he’s noticed during his many years covering the international publishing scene. We talk about much more but  I’ll leave it up to you to discover…

• Ed's book recommendations: 

- The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

- The Passenger & the Compass series, from Europa Editions

- Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler

- Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse

- The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

- Too Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingstone

• About Ed:

Ed Nawotka is the international and bookselling editor of Publishers Weekly and co-founder of Publishers Weekly en Español. Prior to that he was the founder and editor of Publishing Perspectives. Ed has covered the book business for more than two decades, for publications including Bloomberg News, the New Yorker, People magazine, and USA Today. Prior to that he was a foreign correspondent working across Europe, Asia and Africa. He began his career in books as a bookseller for Doubleday Bookstores in Boston. He lives in Houston. 

- Alyssa Cole's Reluctant Royals series

- Alex Pavesi's The Eighth Detective

• About Lawrence

Lawrence Schimel (New York, 1971) is a full-time author, writing in both Spanish and English, who has published over one hundred books in a wide range of genres. He is also a prolific literary translator. His picture books have been selected for the White Ravens from the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany, twice chosen for IBBY’s Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities, and won a Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and illustrators, among many other awards, honors, and distinctions. 

His writing has been published in Arabic, Armenian, Basque, Catalan, Changana, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Farsi (Dari), Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Latvian, Macua, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romansh, Romanian, Russian, Sena, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Welsh translations. 

He started the Spain chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and served as its Regional Advisor for five years.

Today I am speaking with Nadzja Spiegelman. Nadzja is editor-in-chief of Astra Magazine, a new print literary magazine with a strong international focus forthcoming in 2022.

We discuss amongst others what it takes to set up a new literary venture like this, why it is particularly important to do so now, and how her previous job as online editor at The Paris Review prepared her for her position at Astra Magazine.

Nadja's book recommendations:

• Katharina Volckmer, The Appointment
• Pola Olaoixarac, Mona
• Jonas Eika, After the Sun
• Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs
• Miriam Toews, Women Talking
• Maria Judite de Carvahlo, Empty Wardrobes

About Nadja:

Nadja Spiegelman is the author of I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This and the former online editor of The Paris Review. She is the editor-in-chief of Astra Magazine, a new international print literary magazine forthcoming in 2022.

Today I’m excited to welcome my first guest from Scandinavia: Danish publisher Marie Vinter. Marie is founder and publisher of Vinter Forlag, which she started last fall.

Among the different Scandinavian markets, the Danish publishing market in particular has seen many changes in recent years. Imprints were discontinued, publishers merged or were bought by publishing groups, streaming saw an impressive and quite aggressive growth, and several new publishing houses were created, both independently like Vinter Forlag, and under the umbrella of publishing groups.

We’re taking a deep dive into the Danish publishing market, and we’ll discuss the impact of the pandemic of course, but we also talk about how Marie came to found her own publishing house (spoiler alert: it involves one of my favorite authors!), the rise of audio and much more...

• Show notes

Marie's book recommendations:

- The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

- Living Autobiography Book Series by Deborah Levy

About Marie:

Marie Vinter’s publishing career spans more than 20 years working with both bestseller-driven publishers and smaller literary publishers. She began at Borgen Publishers, an independent art-loving publishing house, where she stayed for 10 years, first as editor of poetry and French literature, and then as editorial director and co-founder of commercial imprint S&S (publishing Devil wears Prada). From 2014-2019 Marie was senior editor at Rosinante, one of Denmark’s leading publishing houses, building their list and acquiring bestselling authors, such as Sally Rooney, Rachel Cusk, Maggie Nelson, Ottessa Moshfegh, Rebecca Solnit, Zadie Smith, and Leila Slimani.

In 2020, Marie founded Vinter Forlag, a new independent publishing house dedicated to translated literary fiction and essays. She has taken an active part in the literary scene as board member, festival organizer, co-founder of a magazine and a vibrant live scene, and is always on the lookout for new talented, female voices.

Welcome to a new episode of the Make Books Travel podcast, on which I’m speaking to Lance Fitzgerald, VP, Content and Business Development for Penguin Random House Audio.

On season 1 episode 15, I interviewed Jamie Dupras, General Manager of audiobook producer Deyan Audio. What I took away from that interview was that the audiobook format is an even more important, and explosively growing, player in our industry than I’d already thought.

So I’d been wanting to speak with Lance, an audiobook publisher, to better understand this growth, and discuss what trends he has seen. Among quite a diverse set of topics, we also dive into the areas of growth he and his team at Penguin Random House Audio are specifically looking at, and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on audiobook sales and listener behavior.

Show Notes:

• Lance's (audio)book recommendations:
  
  - Seth Rogen's Yearbook
  - Maggie Shipstead's Great Circle
  - Jenny Lawson's Broken (in the best possible way)
  
• About Lance:
  
  Lance Fitzgerald is VP, Content and Business Development for Penguin Random House Audio, overseeing the editorial acquisitions team.   
  
  Prior to joining PRH Audio, he worked in Subsidiary Rights for twenty-five years as Subsidiary Rights Director at Crown/Random House, Simon & Schuster and Penguin Putnam.    
  
  As Rights Director, he sold international rights for numerous best-selling authors including both President Barack Obama and Former First Lady Michelle Obama, Gillian Flynn, and Andy Weir. 
  
  He is a member of the Frankfurt Book Fair Foreign Rights Advisory Board, and has been a featured speaker and panelist at London and Frankfurt Book Fairs, the Writer’s League of Texas, Authors and Artists Representatives, the Columbia and NYU Summer Publishing courses, the Young-to-Publishing Group, and at the Slice Writers Conference.

Prashant gives us insights into the current situation of the Indian publishing market and explains how the publishing house he started 4 years ago, Wonder House Books, has weathered the challenges brought on by the pandemic.

He also discusses how the Facebook Group Publishers Without Borders got started, right at the beginning of the lockdowns related to the pandemic, where the group is at now, and what their plans are for when we can all meet each other again at book fairs (hint: it involves some cold beverages!).

Show Notes

Prashant's book recommendations:

- Captain Underpants. The Big Bad Battle of Bionic Booger Boy by Jeff Kinney

- The Book with No Pictures by BJ Novak

- Richard Scarry's Best Treasury Ever

- Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, audiobook narrated by Stephen Fry

About Prashant:

Prashant started as an online gaming support executive and transitioned his career into publishing by working with various publishing services companies.

In 2017, he joined Prakash Books to set up a new imprint for children, Wonder House Books, where as a publisher he creates engaging content and attractive designs.

His strong-suits have given the organization grounds to bloom significantly.

He lives in New Delhi and is a father of 2 boys — a 6 year old Human Male and an 8 year old yellow Labrador.

Natalia started out on the acquisitions side, and more recently made the switch to selling translation rights to fiction and non fiction titles published by Eksmo Publishers. I was interested in hearing how she felt about switching to the ‘other side’ and what the Russian publishing landscape looks like at what hopefully is the tail-end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

I also wanted to give you a heads-up here, as we ran into some issues with the sound quality. I would suggest that you listen to the interview using headphones, which I hope will make it easier for you to understand. My apologies for this!

Show Notes

• Natalia's examples of Russian titles that have successfully been selling abroad:

In the non-fiction genre,

- Anna Bykova, Lazy Mom (translated in 17 languages so far)

- Igor Ryzov, Kremlin School of Negotiations (translated in 10 languages so far)

In the fiction genre,

- Eduard Verkin, Sakhalin Island (translated in 11 languages so far)

• Natalia's book recommendations:

- Kira Yarmysh, Strange Things in Cell #13 (Corpus Publisher) - not yet published in translation

- Blake Crouch, The Wayward Pines Trilogy

- Mikhail Bulgagov, Heart of a Dog

• About Natalia:

As a teacher of English and a translator, Natalia once cracked open the door to the “laboratory” where books are created, and never left that side. She's always been searching for a new story for over 15 years. 

She started as foreign rights acquisition manager with a professional medical publisher, building a portfolio for “GEOTAR-Media Group” who became #1 among Russian medical publishers. 

Then she acquired foreign non-fiction for the leading Russian publisher Eksmo Publishers and tried to combine it with selling Russian non-fiction worldwide. 

Now she represents and sells adult fiction and non-fiction rights for Eksmo, making Russian voices heard all over the globe.

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Sherif Bakr, General Manager of the Egyptian publishing house Al Arabi. To say Sherif is well-travelled is quite an understatement; in fact he explains during the interview how important it’s been for him to participate in fellowships around the world.

We address many different topics, including the increase in popularity of the audiobook in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world, distribution challenges between the different Arabic-speaking countries, the imminent arrival of Amazon in Egypt, and the problem of piracy that Arabic publishers have been facing for many years. 

The icing on the cake comes with Sherif describing how he came to virtually visit the White House recently!

Show Notes

Sherif's book recommendations:
- Behrooz Boochani, No Friend but the Mountains. Writing from Manus Prison
- Manon Steffan Ros, The Blue Book of Nebo

About Sherif:

Sherif Bakr (1975) studied in the English school in Heliopolis Cairo, and graduated from the faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University, majoring in Economics and minoring in Computer Science. 

In 1997 took over the family business, Al Arabi Publishing and Distributing, where he'd already been working during his summer vacations since he was young.

He worked in all fields of publishing, from the warehouse to accounting; from sales and marketing to editorial and foreign rights.

Sherif Bakr is now The General Secretary of the Egyptian Publishing Association and head of the Development and e-publishing committee.

Having spotted the chance of bridging the Arab civilization and the Arab World—which counts over 400 million inhabitants—with the rest of the world, his aim is to build those bridges based on books and culture.

Sherif Bakr has been invited to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2008 as part of the invitation program for international publishers and in 2009 as part of the FBF Fellowship program with 15 other fellows from another 14 countries. He has been invited as well to many other book fairs and publishing events to represent Egypt and the Arab World, as a participant, moderator and speaker. These events include the Turin International Book Fair from 2010 to 2016, the Prague International book fair from 2011 to 2016, the ITEF Professional Meetings Fellowship Program of Turkey in 2012, the MICA|Mercado de Industrias Culturales Argentinas from 2013 to 2016, the Amsterdam fellowship in 2013 and the Sharjah International Book Fair from 2013 to 2016.

In 2019, he was elected member of the Freedom to Publish committee in the International Publishing Association. The same year, he was invited to participate in the IVLP (International Visitors Leadership Program) in the US.

Sherif was member of the Higher Cultural Committee at the Cairo International Book Fair for six consecutive years, is currently member of the Book and Publication Committee of the Supreme Council of Culture in Cairo, and member of the Egyptian Export Council for printing, packaging, paper, books and artistic works.

Today’s guest is Andy Hunter, Founder and CEO of Bookshop.org.

Often referred to as the indie alternative to Amazon.com, Bookshop.org proposes a socially conscious way to buy books online. On the day our interview was recorded, it had since its launch in January 2020 raised close to $14 million for local bookstores in the US.

Amazon has seen an alarming growth in the ecosystem of book sales in the US. Andy explains why it was important to act immediately when he came up with the idea. He also gives us an insight into the logistics and the business model of Bookshop.org, which recently branched out to a few other countries as well.

Show Notes

• Andy's book recommendation

Randa Jarrar, Love Is an Ex-Country

• About Andy

Andy Hunter is the Founder & CEO of Bookshop.org. He is also the co-founder and publisher of Catapult press, the publisher of Counterpoint and Soft Skull Press, the co-creator and publisher of the websites Literary Hub, Crime Reads and BookMarks, and co-founder and chairman of Electric Literature. His focus is helping books remain a vital part of our culture in the digital age.

Today’s guest is Allison Scott, who works as Senior Acquisitions Editor in the book publishing arm of ASCD, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit education association that provides professional learning products and services for K-12 educators.

That is quite a mouthful! What it boils down to is that Allison works on books that help teachers and school administrators in the K-12 system do their job better. For non-US listeners, K-12 means from kindergarten to 12th grade, and includes children aged roughly between 5 and 18 years old.

This is the first time I’m interviewing a publishing professional who’s not active in the trade publishing world. But not only did I want to interview Allison because we have a special connection that I’ll mention at the beginning of the interview, I also wanted to learn more about her specialty field, which was completely unknown territory for me before I interviewed her. Always be learning!

Curious to hear more? Listen to my conversation with Allison Scott.

NB: Allison wanted to make the correction that her company, ASCD, provided professional learning services in Saudi Arabia. During the interview she had mistakenly said that it was the UAE.

• Allison's book recommendations:

- Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve

- Ling Ma, Severance

• About Allison:

Allison Scott is a Senior Acquisitions Editor in the book publishing arm of ASCD, a DC-based nonprofit education association that provides professional learning products and services for K-12 educators. For the past thirteen years, Allison has worked in this area of academic publishing, searching out education experts and developing books that help teachers and school administrators so their jobs better.

Nicolas and I were colleagues for a short while, in another lifetime it seems, at Editions Stock. I am glad I got to interview him in his capacity as Managing Director of the Bureau International de l’Edition Française, or in short, the BIEF. 

Together with his team, Nicolas is charged with promoting French publishing abroad. We discuss in detail what this really entails, how his publishing career got started, a brief history of the BIEF, and how the pandemic has impacted his day-to-day activities. 

In normal, non-pandemic times his job requires a great amount of international travel, so as you can imagine, things have changed quite a bit since March 2020.

Here are some of the questions I asked Nicolas:

• When was the BIEF established and what was the main cultural or practical goal in its creation?
• Where did you work before your position at the BIEF, and how did your earlier work and/or personal passions prepare you for your role with the BIEF?
• What are the most crucial ways in which you as director nurture the international relationships that support the BIEF?
• How have these practices had to adjust during a time in which it is not possible to travel?
• Which aspects do you find most personally satisfying about directing the BIEF?
• Where do you find the greatest challenges in promoting French publishing abroad?
• How is the French publishing market doing at this moment, one year into the pandemic?
• What’s the BIEF’s involvement, if any, in the organization of the Paris Book Fair, aka. Livre Paris?

Show Notes

• Nicolas' book recommendations: 

- Hervé Le Tellier, L'Anomalie (Gallimard, 2020; forthcoming in the US with Other Press in November 2021 as The Anomaly, in a translation by Adriana Hunter) 

- Tiffany Tavernier, L'Ami (Sabine Wespieser, 2021; we haven't been able to find any information about a forthcoming English translation)

• About Nicolas 

Nicolas Roche has more than thirty years' experience in publishing. First editor at Gallimard Jeunesse, he then had sales responsibilities in several publishing houses including Retz, Nathan, Magnard-Vuibert and Plon-Perrin, followed by his position as General Manager of Editions Stock (Hachette book group). Prior to joining the BIEF, he was CEO of Centre Pompidou Publishing.

Joining me today is Chad Post, publisher of Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester in upstate New York, which is dedicated to publishing contemporary literature from around the world. At Open Letter, he also oversees the Three Percent website, the Translation Database, and the Best Translated Book Awards.

In addition to many articles and reviews, he is the author of The Three Percent Problem and the editorial consultant for Dalkey Archive Press.

Over the course of the years, Chad and I have been on several panels together to discuss the state of literary translation in the US, which always led to lively and insightful conversations.

So I thought it was high time to invite him on the podcast, which I’m glad he agreed to. 

Here are some of the questions I asked Chad:

• How did your interest in all things translation start out? Are you a translator yourself, or did you spend some time abroad?
  
• When, and why, did you found Open Letter Books?
  
• How has business evolved since you started out?
  
• Can you tell us some more about the Three Percent Blog and the Translation Database? Which project came first?
  
• Were you the one who coined the concept of “3%” that refers to the percentage of translations in the US, when starting the Three Percent Blog in 2008?
  
• Has this percentage evolved since 2008?
  
• Can you give us your views on why translations continue to have such a hard time piercing the US market?
  
• What can be done to improve the situation, not only by US publishers but also by international rights sellers?
  
• Do you think that the recent popularity of international shows on streaming platforms in the US will spill over into the book world?
  

Show Notes

• Chad's book recommendations:

- My Husband by Rumena Bužarovska, translated from the Macedonian by Paul Filev

- Echo on the Bay by Masatsugu Ono, translated from the Japanese by Angus Turvill

• About Chad:

Chad W. Post is the publisher of Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester, where he oversees the Three Percent website, the Translation Database, and the Best Translated Book Awards. In addition to many articles and reviews, he is the author of The Three Percent Problem and the editorial consultant for Dalkey Archive Press.

• Chad's Substack newsletter on the Dalkey Archive Press

On this podcast episode, I am speaking with Livia Stoia, founder of the Livia Stoia Literary Agency. 

Based in Bucharest, Romania, Livia and her team represent international publishers and agents into many Central and Eastern European countries and the Baltic States, as well as Western Europe, Latin America and Asia. 

For the sake of brevity, our conversation on this podcast episode focuses mainly on some of the publishing markets in Central and Eastern Europe, including Romania and the countries that were once part of Yugoslavia. These are the territories where Livia represents 2 Seas Agency, and where she started out when she founded her agency. 

I was curious to hear about the impact of the pandemic on the local publishing markets, how ebook and audiobooks are faring, and how she came to founding her own literary agency in 2003.

One note regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and the restrictions in Romania imposed by the government in order to curb the spread of infections: Our interview was recorded on January 21, 2021, and Livia has pointed out that in the meantime there's been is a slight relaxation of these restrictions in the country. Since the number of infections has decreased, restaurants, theaters and cinemas have recently reopened.

Show Notes

• Livia's book recommendations:

- Reptile Memoirs by Silje O. Ulstein (Aschehoug, 2020 for the Norwegian edition, we didn't find information on a possible forthcoming English edition at the time this episode was published) 

- The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld translated by Michele Hutchinson (Faber & Faber, 2020-UK edition; Graywolf, 2020-US edition)

• About Livia

Livia graduated from two faculties, engineering and sociology. She worked for 5 years at ASTRA Museum in Sibiu, as PR specialist and sociologist. Then, she moved to Bucharest with her family, and was hired by Humanitas Publishing House as copyright manager. She owes Humanitas the chance to enter into this amazing world of publishing, her job there being the cornerstone of a wonderful career in the world of foreign rights business. After 5 years at Humanitas, she opened her literary agency, which entered in its 18th year of existence in January 2021. She built a very nice representation list of Western publishers, and enlarged it constantly. First, she operated only in Romania, then she expanded the business to all Central and East European countries, year by year, and recently to Western countries too, through the acquisition of Ilustrata Agency, based in Barcelona. Now, her agency operates worldwide.

Arablit.org

ArabkidlitNow

Banipal magazine

Words without Borders

RAYA literary agency

International Prize for Arabic Fiction

Literature Across Frontiers

Arab Voices catalogue 2020

International Alliance for Independent Publishers

French sources:

Actes Sud/Sindbad

Maghreb Orient des Livres book festival

Editions Barzakh (Algeria)

En Toutes Lettres (Morocco)

Editions Elyzad (site under construction)

Takam Tikou (children’s books)

Italian source:

Editoriaraba

• Some of Olivia's favorite books this year

- The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld translated by Michele Hutchinson (Faber & Faber, 2020-UK edition; Graywolf, 2020-US edition)

- The Eighth Life, by Nino Haratischwili translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (Scribe US&UK, 2020)

- Minor Detail by Adania Shibli translated by Elisabeth Jacquette (New Directions, 2020-US edition; Fitzcarraldo, 2020-UK edition)

• About Olivia

Olivia Snaije is a journalist and editor based in Paris. She is a contributing editor to Publishing Perspectives, and has written for a variety of magazines and newspapers including The Guardian, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar Art, and CNN, and was a staff member at both Vanity Fair and CBC/Radio Canada in New York. She is a former commissioning editor at Saqi Books as well as a former executive editor of Alef, a London-based cultural magazine about the Middle East. She translated Lamia Ziadé’s Bye Bye Babylon (Random House) in 2011, she has written several books on Paris published by Dorling Kindersley and Flammarion. Editions Textuel (France) and Saqi Books (London) published Keep Your Eye on the Wall: Palestinian Landscapes, which she co-edited, in 2013.

My guest of Season 2, episode 3 is Amy Marie Spangler, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Istanbul-based AnatoliaLit Agency. 

Like several of my previous guests on this podcast, Amy took part in the Jerusalem Book Fair fellowship in which I took part as well, in 2017. A few months later, we started working with AnatoliaLit to represent our list in Turkey, and I’m very happy with our collaboration in this market which does have its challenges. 

This podcast episode turned out to be a speed-course on the state of the Turkish publishing market. But we also talked about Amy’s activities as a translator from Turkish to English, and as an agent representing authors from Turkey and the surrounding regions internationally. 

One thing Amy pointed out after we recorded our interview, and which she suggested I clarify here, is that the curfew that she mentions is in place in Turkey at the moment, is in fact for weekends only, so it is not applied everyday. 

Thanks to this interview I learned a lot about Turkish publishing and hope you will, too! 

Here are some of the questions I asked Amy: 

• What was the state of the Turkish publishing market before the pandemic started? 
• What has happened since the start of the pandemic in terms of book sales in Turkey? 
• Was the publishing world on a standstill at some point this year, and were publication dates postponed? 
• Was there a higher demand for ebooks and audiobooks, as we have seen in other markets? 
• Are there any genres that tend to sell well in Turkey, and others that don’t? 
• You also represent a select number of authors, in Turkey as well as internationally, and you translate from Turkish into English. Can you tell us more about those activities? 
• What was the biggest challenge for you when you launched Anatolialit? How did you address this matter? 

Show Notes 

• Amy's book recommendations: 

- My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland (Tin House, 2020); 

- Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard, translated by David McLintock (Vintage Classics, 2019). 

• Amy's and Szilvia Molnar's podcast: I Have to Tell You: The Letters (Also available on podcast feeds). 
• About Amy: 

Amy Marie Spangler is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, with B.A. degrees in Near Eastern and Classical Archaeology and German Language and Literature. After four years as rights manager and editor for the Istanbul-based publisher Çitlembik, Spangler left her position to found AnatoliaLit Agency, together with Dilek Akdemir, in 2005. 

In addition to running AnatoliaLit, Spangler is a translator, primarily from Turkish into English, and has taught in the Translation Studies Departments of Boğaziçi University and Okan University. Her published book translations include Noontime in Yenişehir by Sevgi Soysal (Milet, 2014), Dawn by Selahattin Demirtaş, co-translated with Kate Ferguson (SJP for Hogarth, 2019), and A Strange Woman by Leyla Erbil, co-translated with Nermin Menenemcioğlu (Deep Vellum, forthcoming).

Since 2017 she is the Publishing Director at World Editions, an English language publishing house specialized in voices from around the globe.

• Information about Canada FBM2020 and its featured authors and illustrators: https://canadafbm2020.com/authors/
  
• About Gillian:

Gillian Fizet is the Executive Director of Canada FBM2020, the entity responsible for representing the Canadian publishing industry’s presence at Frankfurt Book Fair in 2020/21 where Canada will be the Guest of Honour. In the lead-up to 2020, Gillian has developed and overseen tactics, tools and activities for the Canadian publishing industry to meet the export profitability and capacity objectives of the Government of Canada. Additionally, Gillian has worked with various other federal, provincial and territorial stakeholders, and has collaborated with key Canadian cultural agencies and organizations. Prior to this, she was Rights Director for House of Anansi and Groundwood Books in Toronto.

• Where to find Canada FBM2020 online:

- Twitter

- Instagram

- Facebook

In the meantime you can watch his interview about this topic with Angus Phillips, who runs the journal that is publishing his article.

End of season 1

On a side note, after today’s episode I’m putting my recordings on hold for a short while. Even though I won’t be traveling, things will get a little crazy and intense in the weeks leading up to and during the virtual Frankfurt Book Fair mid-October, with plenty of video meetings and such. 

Over the next couple of weeks, I will gradually move to European time, so I can make the most of this important book fair season. I'm in the Pacific time zone, which means there's a 9-hour time difference to overcome. It will be a first to be working on night shifts, and I’m curious to see how it will play out… In any case the podcast will return after the Frankfurt Book Fair with a second season!

Today I’m speaking with French-to-English translator Eve Bodeux.

As a translator, Eve is someone who literally makes books travel. We discuss many things on this 20th episode of the Make Books Travel Podcast, including her professional journey, the challenges and rewards of being a translator from French to English, the American Translators Association, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on her work, and why the English language book market is so challenging for translated literature.

• Eve’s book recommendations:

– Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon (translated from the Italian by Jenny McPhee; NYRB Classics, 2017)
– Bess Kalb, Nobody Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A true (as told to me) story (Knopf, 2020)

She also mentioned:

– Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman (translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori; Grove Press, 2018)
– Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove: A Novel (translated from the Swedish by Henning Koch; Atria Books, 2014)

• The American Translators Association: https://www.atanet.org/
• Lisa Carter’s blog post on royalties and literary translation: https://intralingo.com/posts/10-truths-on-royalties-and-literary-translation
• Interview with Jenny McPhee, the translator of Family Lexicon: https://youtu.be/6MmCn2NFmg0
• Pew Research article on language learning: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/06/most-european-students-are-learning-a-foreign-language-in-school-while-americans-lag
• About Eve:

Eve Bodeux is a dual French-American national and French-to-English translator with over 20 years of experience. She is certified by the American Translators Association and works with clients in France, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the UK, the US and around the world. In addition to her commercial translation work, she has translated several children’s books, and romance and non-fiction works into English. She is co-host of the long-running Speaking of Translation podcast. She earned a BA in French and Political Science and a graduate degree from the University of Lorraine (Nancy II) in France and an MA from the University of Virginia. She is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the American Translators Association through 2021.

Direção Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bibliotecas
Torre do Tombo, Alameda da Universidade
1649-010 Lisboa, Portugal
Tel: +351 21 003 7420 / +351 21 003 7422
General:  dsl@dglab.gov.pt
Support for translation and promotion of authors: internacional@dglab.gov.pt 

http://livro.dglab.gov.pt/sites/DGLB/English/Pages/home.aspx

• About Rita:

Since Rita Fazenda was a little girl, books have been her passion. In fact, books were probably her best friends and certainly her window into the world. She started her career in communications agencies, and was in the first Portuguese company working with scriptwriting, actors, comedians, who she would represent as an agent, for several years.

Then, life took her finally home, the world of publishing, where she’s been working for more than decade, in several Portuguese publishing houses, as a communications officer, an editor and foreign rights manager such as Objectiva and Marcador. Her work gave Rita the opportunity to know some amazing authors and to travel to find some awesome books. Now she’s a publisher in one of the major publishing houses in Portugal, Leya Portugal, and she’s thrilled. The little girl in her feels like a kid on a candy shop. Giving voice to authors it’s an out of this world experience. It’s a kind of magic. And Rita is a firm believer in magic.

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and other books for writers—including her latest: The Occupation Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Jobs, Vocations, and Careers. Her books have sold over 500,000 copies and are available in multiple languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

Not only is Rohit a #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author, a much-demanded speaker worldwide on disruption, trends and marketing, and an adjunct professor of marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University, he has also co-founded his own publishing house: IdeaPress Publishing.

2 Seas Agency handles foreign rights in their books, whose topics mostly focus on business, marketing, leadership and creativity. Since we started working together in 2015 we’ve managed to secure hundreds of rights deals for them (alright, so much for the self-promotion!).

I have been curious to know more about how Rohit evolved from being a published author to becoming a publisher himself and what impact this has, if any, on the books he publishes.

His most recent book is called The Non-Obvious Guide to Virtual Meetings and Remote Work so I also wanted to pick his brain about how to best prepare for the virtual meeting marathon that lies ahead for many of us, in lieu of the physical Frankfurt Book Fair.

SHOW NOTES

• Rohit's book recommendation: Cindy L. Otis, True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News (Feiwel & Friends, July 2020)
• About Rohit: 

IdeaPress Publishing co-founder Rohit Bhargava is on a mission to inspire more non-obvious thinking in the world. He is the #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of seven books and is widely considered one of the most entertaining and original speakers on disruption, trends and marketing in the world. 

Rohit has been invited to keynote events in 32 countries … and over the past few months, given more than 40 from his home studio. He previously spent 15 years as a marketing strategist at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett and also teaches marketing and storytelling as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

https://www.youtube.com/rohitbhargava

Today I’m speaking with Barbara den Ouden of the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Anyone who has traveled to an international book fair is bound to have run into Barbara, who I believe to be something like a fixture at such events!

The Dutch Foundation for Literature supports writers and translators, and promotes Dutch literature abroad. A few months into the pandemic, they announced to have set aside an additional budget amongst others to help foreign publishers who acquire Dutch titles during these challenging times. So I reached out to Barbara to ask her for further details about these special support measures.

We also discuss the current situation in the Netherlands in terms of the Covid-19 pandemic, the book market and the economy in general.

SHOW NOTES

Barbara's book recommendation: Rodaan Al Galidi, Holland (Uitgeverij De Kade, 2020; no foreign language editions available at the time of recording)

On episode 15 I’m speaking with Jamie Dupras, General Manager of Los Angeles-based Deyan Audio. Deyan Audio is the largest independent producer of audiobooks and has won multiple awards for their productions.

I was eager to learn more about the actual production process of an audiobook, and hearing about overall trends in the industry. As a rights seller, I only get to take part in the licensing side of audio rights. The licensing of such rights has been on the rise not only in the US and the UK but also in many other languages. For instance a few days ago we received an offer specifically for the Bulgarian audio rights in a Dutch title that we represent, our first audio-only deal for that language.

The audiobook industry has recorded an explosive growth in the last couple of years, and Jamie explains why 2012 was a pivotal year in this development. We also discuss the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the industry, recording in languages other than English, and the rise in audiobook productions of poetry, graphic novels and comics.

SHOW NOTES

Publishers Weekly article: "All Signs Point Up for Audio Books"

Jamie's book recommendation: Michael Finkel, True Story. Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa (Harper, 2005) 

Feel free to reach out to Andrew at editor@trafikaeurope.org, and visit their website https://trafikaeurope.org/go/radio for further information and sign up to stay informed about future shows.