Help! My Translation is Not Performing. What Should I Do?
So far, we have discussed multiple topics related to the world of literary translations, focussing on self-published authors who hadn’t yet tested the waters in an international market.
But what about all the other authors out there? The ones that have already tried an international market and haven’t found the results they were initially expecting. Are they stuck with a bad translation? Is the book, perhaps, being marketed to the wrong audience? There’s a myriad of reasons this could be the case, and today, we will try to cover the most common ones. Moreover, we will examine different strategies that will help newbies avoid making mistakes from the get-go and potentially help a translation perform better for those who might be fearing it is too late for their released titles.
If a translated book is not performing well in a foreign market, there are several steps you can take to identify the issues and improve its reception among new readers.
Please note this article is for authors who hired a translator rather than using royalty-share platforms, such as Babelcube, —which draw authors in with the promise of a zero-cost translation along with a good dose of wishful thinking that a translated book with little to no marketing will sell itself.
If you actually use the paid services of a linguist and have a legal translation contract allowing you to take some actions, here are some points and strategies to consider.
Strategies to Improve the Performance of a Translated Book:
1. Analyse the Market and Feedback
Ideally, this should have been done before starting the translation project. Just because a book performs excellently in its home market, it doesn’t mean it will make a decent number of sales in a foreign one. Likewise, a book performing poorly in its home market could turn a huge profit for authors in a foreign market (please, don’t get it wrong, this is not an encouragement for authors barely making any sales to put all their hopes into a new market).
As previously stated, proper research must be carried out (either if you are considering translating a book or if you are stuck with a book that is not selling):
*Sales Data: Review sales data to understand current trends. Identify any patterns, such as specific regions or times of year when sales are particularly low.
*Readers Feedback: Gather feedback from readers through reviews, surveys, and direct comments. Look for common themes or issues that readers mention. Ideally, your foreign readers should mention the same things they loved about your book in its original language (by now, you probably know a translation should read as fluently and naturally as the original book). Readers should talk about the same emotions your “original” readers felt.
Big red flag: Finding too many mentions about the translation. Readers may mention they appreciate that an author translated their books, or they loved the translation or were a bit irritated by certain words or phrases related to the language variant (think Spanish from Latin America vs Spanish from Spain, or Canadian French vs French from Canada, or English from the US vs British English, you get the idea).
When several readers focus too much on the translation (especially negative comments), it is a good idea to double-check your book. Does it need a new round of proofreading due to too many typos? Is it impossible to read because the linguist who translated it lacked fundamental skills? Or are the readers’ complaints related to the type of language variant used?
Read 5 Common Mistakes All Untrained Literary Translators Make and How to Avoid Working with a Bad Linguist for a hint of things that could have gone wrong from the beginning.
*Comparative Analysis: Compare your book with similar successful titles in the same market. Identify differences in marketing strategies, cover design, pricing, and distribution channels.
Let us share Caro’s personal experience: A while ago, I read a Scottish Historical Romance book I absolutely loved, and after some research, I found the author had translated only three titles of her vast catalogue into Spanish. The author is widely popular in her home market and has successfully released many series (and continues to do so).
I couldn’t help myself and decided to reach out to her. In my email, I asked about her past experience working with translators (in case this was the reason she stopped releasing translated titles) and whether she would be interested in having more titles translated into Spanish, as I found great potential in her stories and her writing. I knew for sure there was an eager audience of Spanish readers willing to buy Highlander romances (If you’re curious, check out this series!).
However, her answer took me by surprise. In very few lines, she explained that her books simply don’t sell in the Spanish market, and she was not interested in trying again, much as the market might have changed since she last released a title in Spanish. Even though, from my personal experience, I completely disagreed with this, I did understand that not every self-published author has the time and the energy to dig into new markets while continuing to release titles for their already existing audiences.
2. Review and Revise the Translation
No one likes combing through work they’ve already done, but as tedious as this can be, it is vital to understand potential issues before you go to print. And, believe us, it is better to understand if the problem is the translation itself before investing tons of money in marketing a book that will only give you headaches and bad reviews (not to mention bad sales).
*Translation Quality: If feedback indicates issues with the translation, consider hiring a different translator for a revised edition. Ensure the translation captures the original’s essence and resonates with local readers in the same manner it did in your home market.
Common issue: If you didn’t have a skilled translator working on your book, there is a chance you are stuck with a “literal translation”, a text translated almost word-by-word with the same structures and punctuation rules as the source text that ends up sounding foreign to your target audience.
*Localisation: Make sure the book is properly localised, considering cultural references, idioms, and contexts that align with the local culture.
3. Gather Professional Help
*Marketing Experts: Hire local marketing experts who understand the market and can tailor your promotional strategies effectively. These can be influencers offering affordable author services on their social media. You could, for instance, create an Instagram account for your foreign titles if most of your readers hang out there.
*Consultation with Local Media and Authors: Consult with local authors or literary consultants who can provide insights and advice on improving the book’s performance. Follow local blogs or media and find out what works for local authors.
Tip: These days, you can translate pretty much anything with machine translation or AI in order to grasp the basic meaning, so the language barrier shouldn’t stop you from researching potential collaborators. (Having said that, please do not even consider using AI to translate a book you will sell to a foreign audience unless you want to alienate your potential readers from the get-go.)
4. Improve Marketing and Promotion
*Target Audience: Re-evaluate your target audience. Ensure that your marketing efforts are reaching the right demographic. Do some digging into the people who agreed to review your book (if you don’t have any reviews yet, find a title by a fellow author who is doing great on the reviews front). Find out who they are, which age group they belong to, how much free time they have to read, what they like, etc. Cultural differences can also translate into different markets, so you should always know who your readers are before investing a lot of money into promoting a book to potentially the wrong audience.
*Marketing Channels: Diversify your marketing channels. Use social media, email newsletters, book clubs, and literary events to promote your book. Furthermore, find out where your readers hang out the most. For instance, nowadays, most Spanish readers and reviewers can be found on Instagram and YouTube (TikTok and book blogs are not as popular in comparison).
Extra tip: Make it a point to find out where readers buy books in your foreign market. You might be surprised to discover it is not on Amazon.
*Collaborations: Collaborate with local influencers, bloggers, and BookTubers to create buzz around your book. Don’t let the language barrier stop you! You will be surprised to find out that a lot of these influencers actually speak English (either enough to communicate or fully fluently), but their reading habit is to read books in their mother language.
Extra tip: Collaborate with local authors via Newsletter cross-promotions (maybe you can promote their English translations in your home market while they promote your foreign book in theirs? It’s a win-win, right?)
*Advertising Campaigns (after doing solid research!!): Invest in targeted advertising campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, and Amazon.
Extra tip: Think outside the box! Consider investing in promotions in popular online reader magazines.
5. Enhance the Book’s Presentation
Be honest now. Have you involved all relevant experts and professionals in the creation of the book for your foreign audience?
*Cover Design: A cover redesign can sometimes make a significant difference. Ensure the cover appeals to the local market’s aesthetics. Compare your cover with similar titles released in the foreign market that are being best-sellers and the foreign audience responds to. Do you need to redesign your cover?
*Title and Blurb: Rework the book’s title and blurb to make them more compelling and culturally relevant. There is more than word-by-word translation when it comes to titles. Are you sure your translator is a skilled, trained professional who did deep research before translating your title? Are there other books already published under the same title? Are you using the best keywords? If so, do they sound natural, and do they appeal to the foreign audience?
*Book Formatting: Ensure the book’s formatting is suitable for local readers, including font size, layout, and any illustrations.
6. Optimise Distribution Channels
*Availability: Ensure your book is available in both physical and online stores that are popular with local readers. Do your homework. Research. You might find that Mexican readers have different buying habits from Spanish readers or Chilean readers, for instance. Do they all shop in the same places? Not submitting your book to important international retailers might be costing you a good number of sales (a big portion of an audience that doesn’t hang out on Amazon and, hence, has zero chance of ever finding your books).
*Pricing Strategy: Review your pricing strategy. Consider competitive pricing or special discounts to attract more readers. Check out what other authors are pricing their books.
*E-book and Audiobook: Offer your book in multiple formats, such as e-book and audiobook, to reach a broader audience. Diversify your source of income!
7. Engage with the Community
*Reader Engagement: Engage with your readers through social media, forums, and book clubs. Respond to comments and participate in discussions.
*Reader Contests: Run contests and giveaways to create excitement and word-of-mouth promotion.
*Local Partnerships: Partner with local libraries, schools, and literary organisations to increase your book’s reach.
8. Monitor and Adapt
*Continuous Monitoring: Continuously monitor the performance of your book and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Focus on the things that are working and let go of the ones that are only time-consuming and not producing any results.
*Flexible Strategies: Be willing to adapt your strategies based on feedback and market trends.
Final Thoughts
Of course, each book has its own reasons for not performing as expected in a foreign market, and each case needs to be carefully assessed to find the root of the problem. By taking these steps, you can address the issues causing poor performance and create a more effective strategy for promoting your translated book in a foreign market. However, nothing you do can absolutely guarantee your book will turn into a huge success overnight (even if you commission a new translation and relaunch the title with a new cover, blurb, etc.)
At the end of the day, before doing anything, carrying out some good research on the market is the best place to start. If you find it has potential, but your translated titles still aren’t performing, you might want to translate a different series with a new translator (if the reviews pointed out any of the issues outlined here), and this time use some of the strategies we have listed above. And only when things start to pick up, you might want to assess relaunching your previous titles or translating them all over again.
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