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The official podcast from the team at BookFunnel, hosted by Jack Shilkaitis, Kelli Tanzi, and Emma Alisyn, featuring guest interviews, self-publishing industry discussions, and tips for using BookFunnel to build an author business.
0:00: Market saturation means that in English language publishing, there's a lot of competition.
0:05: There are lots and lots of books in English, and authors have to compete, and they have to fight or they have to pay for discoverability.
0:12: But in foreign language markets, there are simply less books available.
0:16: Which means that there's less competition.
0:20: And it also means that readers are very hungry, authors letting go of their preconceptions and misconceptions about translation in general.
0:30: There's a lot of fear involved and there's a lot of assumptions that we make as English speakers about what's going on in Europe or in Latin America.
0:41: And I think that we need to let.
0:42: Hey folks, welcome to the Book Funnel podcast where authors.
0:45: Get real-world advice on writing, publishing, and growing a career on their own terms.
0:51: Whether you're just starting out or you're deep into your author journey, we're here to help you build your readership, boost your book sales, and connect with your audience.
0:59: Each episode, we aim to bring you insights from authors, experts, and industry insiders who have been there, done that, and then some.
1:06: My name is Jack, I'm our lead author sports specialist here at Book Funnel, and I am joined today by my co-host, Emma Allison.
1:14: What's up oranges.
1:16: And our guest for this episode of the Book Funnel podcast is Maxwell Zaks, CEO of Translation Review and an author himself, helping authors translate their works into many different languages, so that they can boost their income or increase their, their, their income in a variety of different ways rather than just relying on publishing in their native language.
1:40: So Max, welcome.
1:42: To the Book Funnel podcast.
1:43: It's good to have you here.
1:45: This has been in the works for a minute because you and I, I know I met you, back in November of 2025 at Author Nation, Las Vegas.
1:58: I know, in, in Vegas of all places, I get to, I get to say that about a lot of people.
2:02: Oh, I met, I met that person in Vegas.
2:04: It makes for very interesting casual conversations with people.
2:08: How, why'd you meet somebody?
2:09: Anyway, but of course, those who know at Author Nation, and then we had some stuff to work through.
2:14: My wife and I recently had a baby, so I've been out for a month or so, and here we are.
2:18: So I'm glad we finally were able to get you.
2:21: On the podcast.
2:22: For those in our audience who may not know about you and your services, go ahead, I'll give you a minute here to, to tell everybody a bit more about yourself and what you do.
2:32: So I started off as an author.
2:34: I've been publishing, self-publishing for almost 20 years, and this whole journey started about 2.5 years ago when I decided that I'd like to translate my back catalog into Spanish because I live in Spain and people are always asking me, what do you do?
2:51: I say, I'm an author and oh, we want to read your books.
2:56: So I was looking around for a way to translate my books into Spanish and I discovered Scribe Shadow, which is an AI platform.
3:05: And I began translating my books using scribe shadow, but I also realized very quickly that I needed to have those translations edited because I was finding a lot of grammatical errors in the text.
3:20: So I hired a foreign language editor.
3:23: I, I hired a translator to do my Spanish and Italian translations, and the results were very good.
3:32: And my Spanish friends and family, my Italian friends and family, they were reading the translations and they loved them.
3:40: So that was kind of the beginning.
3:42: Three months later, I set up my business and I had 2025 authors.
3:51: On my books translating with me, and since then, the business has grown strength to strength, and here I am.
3:59: Right, right.
4:00: And, and so you, you worked, you mentioned Scribe Shadow there at the beginning, and I know you've worked closely with them.
4:09: Obviously, you know, having that trying their service and using that before.
4:14: Tell us a little bit about that because some folks are, might be wondering like, Right, so are you part of Scribe Shadow or are you separate from that?
4:22: If you can explain or elaborate on that for the folks at home.
4:26: Well, I'm Scribe Shadow's number one fan.
4:30: I think when I joined the Scribe Shadow Facebook group, there were less than 20 people in it, so I've kind of been there from the beginning, making a nuisance of myself, asking questions, pointing out problems with the platform, submitting requests, so.
4:46: They knew me already just from being around, and once my business started to grow and I had lots and lots of authors coming to me for that foreign language editing, I decided to write to Scried Shadow and tell them what I was doing.
5:02: Mhm.
5:03: And I basically just said, you know me, I'm the one that's always making trouble in the group.
5:07: I would like to make this collaboration official, and I'd like us to work together, and this is how I'd like to do it.
5:14: And they replied very quickly, to my surprise, that they'd love to work with me too.
5:20: And after that I had a pop up on the Scribe Shadow website.
5:26: so once you've finished translating your book, there's a little pop-up that says, would you like a human editor?
5:32: If so, contact Max.
5:34: And that was really the, the start of our serious growth is when we started that collaboration.
5:41: So no, I don't work for Scribe Scribe Shadow, but I do, but I work with them and have been doing so now for 2 years, and our translation workflow, the way that we translate books is specifically designed to complement the scribe shadow translations.
6:02: Gotcha, gotcha.
6:04: So you're, you're in, in this case, you're not necessarily doing the translation yourself, but you're assisting with the editing.
6:11: In post, so that's that sort of hybrid translation model where AI is involved on the front end, but you have a, a human yourself actually verifying that the translation is correct and what, what all goes into that?
6:29: I, I imagine there's You know, there's, there's quite a few moving parts to that, when, when you're dealing with, like, are you usually getting something that's, you know, 50% of the way there, and then you have to make up that other 50%, or what does it look like?
6:45: So the workflow right now is that we will use scribe shadow exclusively to translate your manuscript into the target language.
6:56: And the way that scribe, the way that it works is it's machine translation, which is a technology that's existed for many, many years.
7:04: And it takes each word in your manuscript and it exchanges it for the most relevant word in your target language.
7:13: However, with AI we can now do that process much more efficiently and much more accurately.
7:21: So instead of just taking each word by itself and translating it into German, the AI can do each word, and then each sentence, and then each paragraph, so that it can do a better job at capturing more of the meaning.
7:39: However, in Italian, for example, there are 17 different tenses.
7:47: 17 you say.
7:49: OK.
7:50: In Spanish, there are 19 different tenses.
7:53: In Japanese, there are only 2.
7:57: And this can pose a problem for the AI when it's trying to translate from English where we generally only use 6.
8:07: This is just an example of the way that AI has got such a difficult job.
8:12: To take your English manuscript and turn it into another language accurately and without errors.
8:19: And so tense is a really good example, and we do a lot of tense corrections, but also there's things like.
8:28: Formal and informal, which we don't really have in English, but exists in most foreign languages.
8:34: And there's also gender.
8:36: So for example, Spanish is a gendered language, but in Spanish is exists either in masculine or feminine form.
8:44: So now you can imagine that you've got your poor AI and it's trying to translate into Italian, and it has to take into account 17 tenses, formal and informal, and masculine or feminine, and make sure that it does that without any errors and captures the original intent.
9:02: And that's where the human editor comes in.
9:05: The AI translations are very good, and they're getting better all the time, but they haven't put us out of a job just yet, and your human editor is gonna make sure that your manuscript is not only error-free.
9:20: But also captures your voice, and that's another thing that the AI can sometimes strip away.
9:30: Is that it's gonna choose the best synonym, the best word based on its analysis of your sentence, but a human translator is gonna do that much more sensitively.
9:42: So, our workflow is AI translation first.
9:46: And then you get one pass with a professional human translator.
9:53: They're a native speaker in the target language, and they are going to read and edit your manuscript so that it's error-free and enjoyable.
10:04: And then we usually do a second pass with a more senior translator, and they'll be looking for things like dialogue.
10:13: Does it sound natural?
10:15: Are all of the idiomatic phrases optimized?
10:18: Things like it's raining cats and dogs.
10:21: I was gonna say, yeah.
10:25: In Spanish, it's raining frogs, and so we'll make sure that all of those types of things are correct as well.
10:34: And then last, but maybe most importantly, is if your book has any elements of humor.
10:42: Let me tell you, it is not easy to be funny in German.
10:47: And so our translators will make sure that all of your puns and your jokes are also going to land.
10:54: Yeah, I, I've, I've heard that the German, Germans have a different sense of humor, and not that they don't have one from what I understand, it's just a different, it's just, it's very differently.
11:05: Yes, exactly, and, and that's, that's something you can't really know unless you are a native speaker.
11:11: Exactly.
11:11: And that's why all of our translators are native in the target language.
11:16: Right, right.
11:17: And so those are the things that we do to make sure that your manuscript is good.
11:23: Because I think as every author knows, it doesn't matter how good your marketing is or how pretty your cover is, the book still has to be good.
11:31: And that's why it's so important to have a foreign language editor work on your manuscript.
11:38: But marketing is also important, and that's why we also do things like we will translate your title.
11:45: You can generate a title using the AI.
11:48: Generally, it's not going to be as good as a title that is suggested by a professional human translator.
11:57: And the same goes for your blurbs and book descriptions.
12:01: I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the reader will decide within 3 seconds.
12:06: Whether or not they're going to buy your book.
12:09: So the quality of your translation is not quite as relevant in that moment.
12:15: What's most relevant is that the title makes sense, and your blurb and your book description are snappy.
12:22: So we pay a lot of attention to those smaller details as well.
12:27: Right.
12:29: But Emma didn't, Kelly had some translations done.
12:32: Kelly is another member of our author support team, by the way, and, and I'm trying to remember, because Emma, maybe you can, you can recall, because she had her title translated.
12:45: Originally by, I think it was like it was a machine translation like you explained, and then later found out, thankfully, but I think before she, she published that that title was, would have been very unfortunate.
12:59: To have published, I think it was in German.
13:01: I don't, Emma, can you remember what it was?
13:02: I'm, I'm trying to recall.
13:05: But I can't off the top of my head.
13:06: Bro, you know how old I am.
13:10: But, but like, but a bit for all those little details, like you, you know, it, it, it, it makes sense that you would, you would want a human.
13:19: Checking that and like the, like you said, the reader is gonna make their decision in a in a snap, but I imagine reviews are still important in foreign markets.
13:28: It's not like, so even if somebody does, on a, you know, on a whim, buy your book without knowing that maybe the translation isn't up to snuff, to use an idiom, right?
13:39: Once they've read it and, and see that the translation is, is of low quality.
13:44: They're you're probably going to, you're probably gonna get some poor reviews on that book, and I imagine reviews still matter in all those foreign markets just like they do in English.
13:53: I mean, of course, reviews are very, very important, and I, but I always tell authors when you're gonna publish in a foreign language market, you need to have a very thick skin, because readers in other countries have a different culture around writing reviews.
14:09: Of course, yeah, and we'll use Germany as an example.
14:13: Germans will leave you a scathing review.
14:18: And tell you all of the things that they don't like about your book, and then they will go on to buy every book in the series.
14:28: Love it.
14:30: Right, because it is part of reader culture in Germany to offer critiques.
14:38: Hm, not compliments.
14:41: So you will often get a review that in English might be heartbreaking is par for the course in German, and so I always tell our authors, focus on the star rating.
14:56: If you have a good average star rating that's comparable to your English book, so let's say that your book in English is rated 4.3.
15:06: You want your German translation to be within 4 points, so you want it to be 3.9 or above.
15:14: OK.
15:15: And if that's what you're getting, then I would say don't necessarily read the comments, focus on the star rating.
15:25: Now, what happens if it's different, because with my German translations, and I'm going through the process of retranslating everything now, I would have for the same book, one, it's a terrible translation and one, I really enjoyed this.
15:37: I'm like, wait a minute, that's, what do I do with that data?
15:42: Well, first of all, you, you don't read the comments, you focus on the star rating, but also, foreign language readers are very sensitive to poor translation.
15:51: They have been putting up with poor AI translations for years, and they don't want any more of them.
16:01: So, we need to be aware of that when we are publishing our books in translation.
16:07: And there are a small proportion of foreign language readers that are anti-AI just like we have them in English publishing.
16:18: And even if they like your book, they will leave a negative review because they suspect that you used AI and.
16:26: I think what's really frustrating is we have, I have books that I've published in Germany that were written in German by a native German speaker.
16:40: And even those books have got reviews saying this translation is horrible and beware readers, this is an AI translation and no translation occurred.
16:53: So, you know, we have to have a thick skin to a certain extent because just like publishing in English, not everybody's gonna like your book.
17:03: Of course, But the proof is in the pudding.
17:07: If people are buying your book and your average star rating is within 4 points of your English, then I think we need to be satisfied with that.
17:16: Yeah.
17:17: That's a, that's a good guideline.
17:19: That's it and I, I imagine there, there's probably some of that with time, I, I imagine we'll, we'll.
17:27: will change as like attitudes with AI translation and so forth shift, but I, I, I, I imagine too that you probably have plenty of examples of, of books that have been AI translated and then have been edited.
17:44: And because they've had that human touch, right there's, you know, people wouldn't be able to notice because you've, the AI did its job, and then where it missed the mark, the human came in and, and that's the whole point of that, that hybrid model.
18:00: So, it, it, it's interesting and unfortunate that, you know, I got a natively German written book would, somebody would leave a negative review saying that it was AI, but I imagine the other side of that coin too is that this, this hybrid process does yield a high quality finished product that a native reader.
18:22: Wouldn't turn their nose up at, most likely.
18:25: And my goal is not to deceive.
18:28: Right now you can still publish your books on Amazon in any language, and you're not required to disclose AI use.
18:39: You're not required to disclose whether the book was written or assisted with AI or anything like that.
18:46: But my recommendation to authors is always to honesty is the best policy.
18:53: And yes, it can be a little bit scary to admit that AI is part of your workflow.
19:02: However, I think there are plenty of authors that we can look at who can demonstrate that being honest and disclosing AI use doesn't have to be the end of your career.
19:15: And Joanna Penn is an amazing example of somebody who has actually used that point of disclosure.
19:22: To educate her readers about how her books are written, and I think actually it adds value.
19:30: It creates a conversation about her creative process, rather than just battening down all the hatches and hoping for the best.
19:39: Mhm.
19:40: And following on from that, especially in Europe, governments are starting to legislate around disclosure.
19:50: They're saying people want to know how the products that they're buying are made.
19:57: And that applies to books too.
20:01: Now, none of those laws currently apply to individual authors self-publishing their books, but I think that the direction is clear, that at some point in the future, authors, illustrators, musicians, creative professionals are going to be required to disclose what part of their process was assisted by AI.
20:29: So my goal is always to be ahead of that.
20:32: Is to encourage authors to get ahead of that and to tell their readers exactly how their process, how they use AI in their process, and certainly not to attempt to deceive.
20:46: And right now, it, it is possible to produce hybrid translations where the reader can't tell that AI was used.
20:56: But that's certainly not my goal.
20:57: My goal is reader enjoyment.
21:00: My goal is to produce manuscripts that readers enjoy regardless.
21:05: Right, right.
21:07: No, no, absolutely.
21:09: And I, I think my, my point there was more just that.
21:13: There's a AI kind of has a It's, it's built a bit of a reputation for itself because we're, yeah, well, and, and we're in the early, earlier, we're still, I would say in the early stages of this technology, and so there's a lot of stuff that's been put out there.
21:34: In a variety of different, fields, not, not even just publishing, right?
21:39: But people have created a lot of different things with AI and And just put it out there, and I think a lot of people have wound up being disappointed when they find that.
21:47: If you just use AI to create the thing, whatever that is, in this case a translation, you could be making a mobile app, you could be making a website, but you don't have a human go back and review it, and, and fill in the gaps that are gonna be left behind, you're gonna wind up with A disappointing experience for whomever is the, the target consumer in that case.
22:12: And the kinds of things that we're editing for in these AI translations are the kinds of things that reduce reader enjoyment.
22:20: So for example, constantly tense switching.
22:24: Are we in the present tense?
22:25: Are we in the past tense?
22:27: Is, are the types of things that take the reader out of the story.
22:32: And make them focus on the words on the page.
22:36: And so that's why I would, I obviously recommend that a human is part of your translation process.
22:44: OK, so I have a question about that.
22:45: Say you're an author on a budget, you run your manuscript through Scribe Shadow and you give it over to your human translator, and you have money for a proofread.
22:55: What can that author expect versus getting money for a line edit?
23:00: Like, what's the difference between a proofread, a line edit?
23:03: What can you realistically expect?
23:06: Well, that's why I've always made it very clear to call our service Translation Review.
23:13: It's neither proofreading nor copy editing in the tradition.
23:18: It is a bespoke workflow designed specifically for AI translations to optimize them and provide an error-free manuscript that readers can enjoy.
23:33: So, that's what you should expect, is a manuscript that you can publish in the target language confidently.
23:40: OK.
23:41: Right, so it's, it's, you're ideally, you would have had probably you would have had proofreading and, and line editing and copy editing done in the original language.
23:52: Yes, that the manuscript was written in, and then that goes through the AI translation and now.
23:59: You have your translators or your editors know, OK, we're, we're comfortable working with that output, and then like you said, it's, it's, it's its own thing is, is, but is there a difference though, if, if are they checking for literal wrong word or are they checking for nuance at the line level?
24:18: What exactly?
24:19: Because if you're an English speaker and you have no idea.
24:22: Whether or not the editor did their job.
24:24: What are you looking for?
24:26: OK, so the first thing we're looking for are common AI errors, and those can be on the most basic level, formatting problems, missing line breaks, incorrect punctuation.
24:39: Double spaces, incorrect ellipses, all of those kind of really messy things that the AI can just, doesn't always do a great job at.
24:48: And that, that's like the most basic level.
24:51: Then we're looking for grammatical errors.
24:53: So that's things like, it's translated the tense wrong or your sentence.
25:00: Is incorrect in the tense and the gender.
25:04: Especially when you have plurals, for example, boys, ninos in Spanish, plural is los Ninos, not las Ninos.
25:15: And so we would make sure grammatically that it's translated all of those plurals and those genders and those complicated tenses correctly throughout the manuscript.
25:26: And that's a lot of work.
25:27: On average, for an average novel of 80,000 words, we would make between 3 and 5000 grammatical corrections.
25:36: Wow.
25:38: And then on a higher level, we're looking at things like consistency, so.
25:45: If you have a location in your novel Ballyrock Castle, for example, we would make sure that it's always Ballyrock Castle and not Castle Ballyrock.
25:56: The Castle at Ballyrock, and that's about branding, it's about making sure that your names and places and proper nouns are consistent.
26:07: Because the AI will struggle with that, and in fact, the AI tries to create variety.
26:15: Hm.
26:15: And that causes a lot more problems than it solves.
26:20: Right.
26:22: And then on the top level, we'd be looking at jokes, puns.
26:28: Idiomattic phrases, nuance, so for example, if you're the type of writer that Will use language.
26:37: In a way that's very unique to you, we will try and identify those parts and transfer them over into the target language.
26:49: So those are the kinds of things that we're doing, and you can't do those things unless you actually read it.
26:57: These are the kinds of things that we can do with a basic spell check.
27:02: Or with gram.
27:04: It requires someone who can read and understand in both languages, and that's why at least 2 passes.
27:14: The first pass is done in tandem, so they have the English and the translation together.
27:22: And then when we do the 2nd pass, it's without the English.
27:27: It's without the original language, and that's where we start to really get into the meaning.
27:34: Because you don't have the English to tell you what they're trying to say.
27:39: You're reading it in in German or in French, and that's when we'll do a lot more kind of qualitative changes.
27:47: We'll change phrases, whole sentences, rearrange words, stuff.
27:52: So you really have to trust your translator to almost be a co-author because you have to trust them to understand the nuance and the context and the subtext.
28:01: That's a little scary.
28:03: Yeah, it is, it is a little bit scary actually, because I can't learn all of the languages, and at a certain point there is trust, but that's why we always try to use two different people.
28:17: So we're getting that different perspective.
28:19: Usually it'll be one translator from the team will do the first pass.
28:24: And then it'll be the team leader who will go in and do that second pass.
28:29: So we're getting different perspectives, and, and sometimes we genre matter?
28:33: Like, do you have translators who will, like, specialize in, like, contemporary romance, and then translators who specialize in, like, hard sci-fi?
28:41: Is there any difference, or does it not matter?
28:44: Yeah, so in the beginning, I would, when we were high so, we've got 29 translators who work for us now full time.
28:52: And in the beginning, I always used to say you don't get to pick and choose.
28:56: You, you get the book that you're assigned and you know, there's no picking and choosing.
29:01: But with time, now that we've done almost 200 million words, it has happened naturally that certain translators have gravitated to certain genres, and that has actually improved our results.
29:14: So for example, I, I have Marcus, who works for us in German.
29:19: And I always send him police, procedural, and military.
29:24: Anything that's military or police always goes to Marcus, because once you have spent 30 hours researching all of the correct job titles for the different types of policemen in German, that becomes very vital knowledge.
29:41: Right.
29:42: I have somebody who always does.
29:45: Horse books, it's actually a very popular genre, is books with an equestrian theme, and so those always books, those books always go to the same person now because she knows all the different words in German for bridle and saddle and tack and you know, all of the millions of complicated words.
30:08: So yes, it, it has sort of come now that we've got specific people who like to do specific genres.
30:15: That makes sense.
30:16: And it makes sense that that would develop over time too.
30:20: Right.
30:22: Excuse me.
30:23: And on that note of like genre because I know one thing, like one question I have, so I write science fiction.
30:32: And I see a lot of, a lot of romance authors go for German or Italian, Spanish, those would be, probably, and you tell me if I'm wrong, but from what I see from the outside, those are the three.
30:47: Most popular, like Languages to translate an English romance novel into.
30:53: German, French, Italian, Spanish in that, I left, I left out French, but you know, myself, I've had personal exposure in my life to Russian and Korean and Japanese and Chinese languages that I think it'd be really cool to see my book in, but is there, is there a different market for different genres?
31:15: Are there different languages that it's better to translate a science fiction novel into?
31:21: first, as opposed to, a, a romance novel, because at some point you are looking for a return on this investment, as you're probably wanting to start in a market that's going to be able to do that for you.
31:32: So I don't know if there's a difference there in terms of, of genre.
31:36: We'll circle back to getting a return on your investment because I think that that's a really good one, but first of all, we offer Japanese, Hindi, and Korean right now, and we've added those languages quite recently, and we're adding simplified Chinese shortly, and I think that those languages are very interesting because as more and more authors translate into German.
32:02: The competition is starting to become more stiff in Germany.
32:07: And so for authors who can afford it and who are forward looking, I like to recommend one European language.
32:16: So for example, for you, Jack, for your sci-fi, we might like to do German and Japanese.
32:23: Mhm.
32:24: And I think that's a really good way to use a phrase of hedging your bets.
32:29: Because choosing a foreign language market is a little bit like predicting the stock market.
32:34: It's rich and there are no guarantees.
32:39: So I always recommend, if you can afford it and you've got the time and the energy, pick two languages, and that way we can kind of spread the risk.
32:49: That said, how do you pick the right foreign language market for your book, is a very good question, and I always recommend to authors to go and hang out on the Amazon store for Germany or for France, so Amazon.de, Amazon.fr and do market research in the same way that you would do in English.
33:15: And that is, go to the store, have a look around, find your categories, because the categories are not the same on German Amazon as they are in English, and you may find out that the category that you sell best in, in English does not exist in German or Italian.
33:35: Interesting.
33:36: So I would recommend that you go and you have a good look around, find your categories, have a look at the books that are already selling well in those categories, because that is gonna be the strongest indication.
33:51: More than what I can tell you, my best guess.
33:54: And a good tip that I can give you is to search my name.
33:59: Maxwell's A on Amazon.de or Amazon.fr.I.S because then you will see all of the authors.
34:10: You'll know for first of all, that they're independent.
34:12: You will know, second of all, that their translation is a hybrid AI human translation.
34:18: And you can see what they are doing, where they're successful, what categories they are competing in, and that's often the best way to do it, is good old fashioned detective work.
34:30: That said, for sci-fi, my personal recommendation is Germany.
34:35: They have a very strong sci-fi readership.
34:39: But I have also seen sci-fi authors do quite well in French and Italian.
34:46: Interesting.
34:47: So, yeah, I think that there's always got to be a little bit of market research.
34:51: Yeah, no, that, that, that makes sense.
34:53: I mean.
34:55: You have to do that if you're self-publishing in English, right?
34:59: And, and so it makes sense you would want to replicate that process for that market because you don't, there's, there's all different kinds of dynamics that that are at play.
35:11: The Portuguese, like the, the South American market is, is one market that I kind of want to zoom in on a little bit if, if, if we can.
35:19: Do, do you guys do translations into Portuguese?
35:23: Yes, OK, I wanted to confirm that first.
35:26: Yeah, we offer Spanish, European, Spanish, Latin American, and Spanish Catalan, and we offer European, Portuguese, and Brazilian Portuguese.
35:39: Right, there's a, there's a distinction.
35:42: That already sounds complicated.
35:44: Yes, but something that we also do is we offer Spanish neutral and Portuguese neutral, so it is our best guess to create a translation for you that's enjoyable and readable, both sides of the Atlantic.
36:06: Right.
36:06: So, we are seeing authors have some success using international or neutral Spanish or neutral Portuguese, so that's an option too.
36:17: Interesting.
36:18: It's interesting.
36:19: What's exciting about Latin America is that there are so many countries to choose from and also that marketing is much cheaper in Latin America.
36:32: So, in North America, I, right now, I'm averaging about 90 cents cost per click for my Facebook ads.
36:42: I've seen CPC go as high as $1.
36:46: In Latin America, I've seen that CPC as low as 1 cent.
36:51: Right now, I think I'm averaging about 7 cents on my Facebook ads.
36:56: So marketing definitely a lot cheaper.
37:01: You have to balance that against the fact that the reader has got a lower purchasing power.
37:07: What does that mean?
37:07: It means they spend less money on books overall.
37:11: Right.
37:12: So yes, it's cheaper to market to them, but they will have less money to spend on books.
37:17: So you've got to take that into account.
37:20: I've had a lot of success in Brazil with Kindle Unlimited.
37:26: In Brazil, they read a lot of e-books.
37:29: They tend not to buy as many print books and they have a very popular Amazon market.
37:36: So last year I released a new series, I.
37:40: I'm usually white, and I usually prefer to sell direct, but I thought, let's have a go with Brazil.
37:46: We'll put the series on Kindle Unlimited for 6 months, and we'll do Facebook ads to drive traffic to that series, and we were very successful.
37:57: So, yes, a little bit of market research, a little bit of knowledge about how people buy books in the target language can go a long way.
38:08: Right, I, I, I know of a, a video game developer, an independent video game developer, who had his video game translated into different languages, and specifically, I, I believe it was the Brazilian market, became about a quarter of his, his total earnings because he focused on Specific, the buying power of the individual in that market and priced the game appropriately for that market.
38:36: So, if, if you, it's one thing I always noticed like when I'm pricing, even when I'm pricing my English books, cause I haven't done any translations yet, but I, when I'm pricing them for all of the different markets on Amazon, it's like if you set it to 99 cents, it will, it will try to match the conversion of that in each market, but you could technically price it lower.
38:58: In many of those markets, than what is the equivalent of 99 cents in the US market, for example.
39:06: Or or whatever, whatever it happens to be across the pond, whatever the equivalent is.
39:11: So, like, that's something that I know I've been aware of, and I imagine like, Kindle Unlimited in that context makes Absolute sense.
39:19: If the, if it's a market where the individual has less buying power, they're probably gonna be Looking for the, and they are a voracious reader, they're gonna be looking for the most affordable way to get books, so that would, that absolutely makes sense, and you don't know that unless you've done the research.
39:36: Exactly, and also maybe a little bit of trial and error and that's the good thing about Kindle Unlimited is, OK, you have to be exclusive, but if it's not working out, you can always change your strategy.
39:50: And go wide or you can be wide and then you can change your strategy and go for Kindle Unlimited.
39:55: So there is a little bit of trial and error, but the good thing about Latin America is when you're only paying 3 cents CPC.
40:03: You can afford to try different things and be a little bit more creative right now.
40:10: Now for Clar and free still work in these foreign markets like having a perma-free book like that's a really popular target.
40:18: Still here in America.
40:20: So market saturation means that in English language publishing, there's a lot of competition.
40:26: There are lots and lots of books in English, and authors have to compete, and they have to fight or they have to pay for discoverability.
40:34: But in foreign language markets, there are simply less books available, which means that there's less competition.
40:43: And it also means that readers are very hungry for new books, and they tend to be less jaded to our strategies, our author marketing strategies.
40:55: So I know in English publishing, it's like, oh, there's another author with another newsletter.
41:00: But in Latin America, in Germany, in France, in Italy, it is very likely to be the first time that that reader has encountered a successful indie author with their own website, with a lead magnet, maybe it's a novella or a bonus chapter that they can get for free.
41:20: They're much more likely to give you their email address and sign up for their newsletter.
41:25: So yes, the added difficulty is it's in another language.
41:30: But the bonus is that the readers are much more inclined to respond positively to your marketing tactics.
41:39: So yes, definitely lead with a freebie.
41:44: What would your recommendation be?
41:45: We're talking about reader magnets and foreign language here, so, to step away from the, like, the the conversation of selling books, if, if you do start to gain subscribers on your newsletter from other countries, is there an expectation that your newsletter is in different languages, or do, like, what, what, do you have any guidance there for authors who might be, you know, that really depends on the market.
42:14: So for example, Germany.
42:17: It's quite likely that although your readers will prefer to read in German, they speak English very well.
42:25: So you might get away with delivering your newsletter to them in English.
42:30: However, other countries where English language is less prevalent.
42:37: For example, Brazil, Italy, it's a good idea to provide that content in translation, and it's always a question that authors ask me, do I need to do separate social media?
42:51: Do I need a different website?
42:54: And those are all really good questions that need to be answered on a case by case basis.
42:59: If you're publishing in translation in Sweden.
43:02: Great, and Swedish people love reading books in their native language.
43:07: However, 98% of Swedish people speak English perfectly, and have done so since they were, you know, 3 years old.
43:18: So it, I think would probably be a waste of time and money to produce your newsletter in Swedish.
43:24: Sure.
43:25: But in Italian, I would say it's vital.
43:29: OK.
43:30: No, that, that.
43:31: That, that would make sense.
43:33: and it makes sense, it would also be different, right?
43:35: It, it comes down to, again, doing your research for those kinds of things as well.
43:41: So, As far as like if we can return back to that like.
43:46: the conversation of that making that return on your investment, because obviously I, I think that's, that's the best way to look at this is this is an investment in your Author career.
43:58: This is gonna give you access to different markets that you didn't previously have.
44:02: So I Already kind of talking about that a little bit, seems like, if I'm just looking at this from the outside, I should probably just translate my book into German, because that's probably the best market to do it in.
44:15: And, and just go from there, or translate it into those four languages, and it's all gonna work out perfect for me, right, Max?
44:21: Well, the short answer to that question is strategy.
44:25: Yes.
44:26: You don't want to embark on any kind of new endeavor with your publishing business without a coherent strategy.
44:35: And one of the things that I've seen work really well for our authors is staggering their publications.
44:44: So, for example, you've got 5 books in your series.
44:48: Do you want to come in and translate all 5 books at once into German and spend 5 or €6000 doing so?
44:56: If you can afford it, yes, why not?
44:59: But for most independent authors, that's a very scary prospect.
45:04: So my recommendation is to stagger those translations.
45:08: We will translate the first book into German.
45:11: Titles, blurbs, book descriptions, ad copy, all the bits and bobs for the first book, and we will do titles and blurbs and book descriptions and all the other bits and bobs for your second book too.
45:24: And that's so that your second book can go up on pre-order at the same time.
45:30: Book number 1 is out, it's available for sale.
45:33: Book number 2 is there.
45:35: If you don't have book 2 ready for pre-order, you're gonna, you're leaving money on the table.
45:43: You're not taking the opportunity to optimize that read-through rate.
45:48: Because we all know if an author reads your book and they like it, the first thing they're gonna do.
45:54: Is look for another book by the same author.
45:57: If you don't have that 2nd book available.
46:02: You're missing out.
46:04: So this is the strategy that I employ most often for authors who are worried about spending their, all their hard earned money too fast, is let's do the first book, and then we'll put the second book for pre-order, and then once you've sold lots of copies of the second book and you're panicking, you can come back to me and we will translate that for you and make sure that it's available by the due date.
46:28: Right.
46:29: And that way you're kind of spreading the risk, and you're also spreading the work, because I think the biggest mistake that authors make when they're translating is that they underestimate how much work is involved.
46:43: Let's say that you've got 10 books, great, in English.
46:47: Well, in the next 6 months, we're gonna double your back catalog, and now you've got 20 books.
46:53: Or 30, and now you've got 20 or 30 titles and 20 or 30 blurbs, and book descriptions and ad copy, and for each one of those books in each one of your languages, and it can get extremely complicated.
47:08: So I like to suggest a staggered release.
47:13: So you're not treating your translations as like an ancillary product, and nice to have, you really do need to go into it treating it as a whole.
47:21: Independent catalog, yeah, yeah, and I mean that's why you can't use the same ISPN.
47:29: Mhm.
47:30: Your English and German versions of the same.
47:33: It's a new book.
47:35: It has a new title, it has a new ISPN.
47:39: And, and that's amazing because you can rapidly scale your author business from 5 books to 10 to 15 to 20, but there, you know, that there's a lot of extra work that goes along with doing that, and it happens so far.
47:56: Right, well, and I'm just even thinking like the, we talked about newsletters and social media accounts and like all those things that You would take for granted that you're gonna have to, there's work that's gonna have to be duplicated in many cases that, that is beyond the scope of just to manage those catalogs in different languages.
48:18: I think that's the, that's the thing that's really striking me is that like, getting the translation done is like, that's not the finish line.
48:27: That's like the starting line is what it is what it seems like, right?
48:31: Right, and that's why I think that doing that kind of staggered release gives the author the opportunity to kind of go through that learning curve in a more sustainable way.
48:44: So yeah, I'm all about making sure that there's a strategy and a publishing schedule in place before you get started.
48:51: What about VAs?
48:53: Because like at a certain point in your English career, you have to hire, you just have to hire a VA to help you out.
48:58: If you're going to do that with each of your countries, Germany, Brazil, do you recommend hiring someone in and from that country, or is it OK to just hire somebody experienced with translations?
49:10: I think if you were going to hire someone, you should certainly hire someone with a little bit of local knowledge, and that really goes a long way.
49:17: For example, in Italy, crime and mystery books are most commonly associated with the color yellow, because traditionally, in the 60s and 70s.
49:29: Almost all crime mystery books in Italy were published by one publisher, and they used yellow to differentiate those books, and so now, it's even become like a phrase in Italian, yellow books are crime and mystery novels.
49:45: And those are the kind of little things that you will get if you hire someone with local knowledge.
49:52: And we can do a little bit of that for you.
49:55: We have, I think, maybe 15 or 20 authors that we do their monthly newsletter for them.
50:02: We help them manage the translations for all of their different Facebook ads and optimize the.
50:08: Ad copy, and we also do a little bit of Amazon ad optimization.
50:15: So, really getting into like the keyword analytics, because you can't just use your English keywords and translate them.
50:24: Into German or into Italian, because Germans or Italians have got their own cultural context, they will use different words to search, and so it's very important that you have localized keywords and that you stay on top of those.
50:40: I imagine that would be really useful for like automation sequences that are static, to take the whole automation sequence and have that translated because it's not a different weekly newsletter, it's, yeah, and you, you have to be sensitive as well to local tastes.
50:56: So we do lots of spicy romance, and we have slightly different editing guidelines for different languages, for example, in French.
51:09: Recently, we've had to become a lot more sensitive to dark romance, dubious consent, yeah, because of the political climate in France right now, and we were seeing some of our very spicy dark romance authors getting a little bit of pushback from French readers because the translation was not sensitive enough.
51:34: Sure, that makes sense.
51:36: That's why I think if you can always try and hire someone who has specific knowledge of your target language and the market.
51:46: Right, right, well, no, I.
51:48: Yeah, that, that, that I think that that goes without saying that that's Just like you would have knowledge of The your own market, English, and, and how to market to so you just naturally would have that instinct to know, oh, I probably shouldn't phrase it that way, right?
52:06: Somebody who is Italian is gonna know, you, you don't want to phrase it that way to To Italians, right?
52:14: And I'm not people in Italy, not Italians, the Italians we have here in the United States, but that, that's totally different, that's a totally different, I've seen The Sopranos, so I should be able to market to those Italians, but those who live in Europe, I wouldn't know the first thing.
52:29: So I don't think you can make any assumptions there.
52:32: That you're just gonna, and I, I feel like sometimes the conversations I've seen about translations on like in a lot of Facebook groups, is it's very It's very surface level, it it most of it is just like, yep, you should get it translated in German and then just put it out there and you'll, you, you know, just go, and it's, there's, it's goes so much deeper than that.
52:53: I mean, you can get very good organic discovery in foreign language markets that you can't get in English language markets, but the more and more people who translate and the more competition there is, obviously organic discovery will go down.
53:12: But I would say the biggest mistake or the biggest misconception that English language authors have about publishing in translation is that they won't be able to engage with their new readers.
53:26: And yes, there is a language barrier, but if the language barrier is gonna put you off, maybe you should reconsider whether or not translations are for you.
53:38: And if I could give one piece of advice, it would be, do everything you can to engage with your foreign language readers, because they are going to give you, they're going to reward you so much more than your English language readers do, because they are so hungry for that content and for that relationship.
53:59: And tell me if, if I'm, if I'm wrong here.
54:03: But I would imagine that If you're making an effort to connect.
54:09: With those readers, that the fact that you are not a native speaker, that you're an American author, or or whatever the case may be, that's not going to be It really is relevant, that that's not gonna be held against you if you are making that genuine effort to connect with them, that they're gonna care more about About that than they are that they're not just gonna write you off because you're an American author.
54:33: No, and in fact, quite the contrary, for example, in Italy.
54:38: We're seeing a lot of popularity right now, a lot of keywords trending that they want American things.
54:45: They want American style book clubs.
54:49: They want American style content and ideas.
54:53: Last summer, for example, in Italy was really, really popular for American authors in general.
55:01: So, no, I don't, I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing.
55:04: I think if you're marketing and branding.
55:07: Correctly and you're reaching out in an authentic real human way, then no, it's not gonna count against you, then you're American, right?
55:18: I had a selling, right?
55:20: I, I had a friend in college who was Korean.
55:25: And we, we met, because he was late to class one day and sat next to me, and he introduced himself, and I just by hearing his name, I'm like, are you Korean?
55:34: Because I was familiar enough with, I, through martial arts, I was familiar with the Korean language, and I, I, I, you know, familiar with Korean surnames.
55:43: And he was just amazed that I knew something about his, about his culture, and we became really good friends that semester.
55:51: So I, I, I feel like there's, there's some, there, there's probably an innate human tendency to like, let's, let's share with each other.
56:01: And you're making this effort to, to bring this.
56:04: Right, exactly, and I, so I think some authors might be hesitant to wonder like, oh, am I, are they gonna think that I'm like stepping on toes or that, or anything like that.
56:13: And I, that was what my gut told me, and you confirmed it was that I, as long as you're being genuine and, and being human, I don't think that you're gonna run into that problem.
56:23: Right, genuine, human, and the book is good because we can do all of these things, we can give you the best keywords, the best titles and the best bloods, but the book has to be good, and if you believe in your book, if you're proud of it, then I think lead with that and the rest should follow.
56:44: Yeah.
56:45: Have, have you ever had a case where a book didn't do so well in the English markets, but it did better?
56:53: In or is more well received in foreign markets.
56:55: Yes, and if you're writing in a high competition category.
57:01: For example, romance, you can expect to do at least as well, if not better, than you do in English, and actually I, I don't really even publish in English anymore.
57:13: I, I only really publish in English because I write in English, so I might as well, but I write specifically for translation for foreign language markets because I get.
57:24: A much better return on my investment, and when I say investment, I mean all the effort that I put into it as an author, as well as the cost of translation.
57:34: That you can, you can just do much better in foreign language markets, especially if you're in a high competition genre.
57:42: That brings up a really interesting question.
57:45: If you're an English author and you know you're going to translate into German, is there anything you can learn about That market, when you are writing your English version to then make the translation, I guess, go smoother.
57:58: I think there's two questions there.
58:00: One question is about writing to market, and that, yes, you, you can.
58:06: I have had some very considerable success identifying foreign language trends, and then writing short series targeted in that way, and you can do that, but in terms of preparing the manuscript that you already have.
58:26: For translation, when it comes to AI, where do you get out what you put in.
58:30: If your manuscript has got basic problems, for example, tense switching, point of view switching, you know, unintentional head hopping, inconsistencies, these will be reproduced in the translation, and they may even affect the quality of the translation because the AI will get confused if it can't figure out who's speaking.
58:55: Mhm.
58:57: So, yes, one of the things that you can do to make sure that your translation comes out better is make sure that you do very thorough English language editing first, and that makes our jobs much easier.
59:09: And often we will see a very bad translation come out of the AI and when we go back to the original English, we find the problems there.
59:22: So maybe, so maybe publish your 1st 3 books and get your craft solid first and then worry about translations.
59:30: Yeah, well, yeah, this probably would not be something that like a first time author would.
59:35: Wouldn't necessarily want to consider, or I mean, it's an investment, so if you have the money.
59:42: Spend it, but is there some value in honing your craft first, and then you get to that point and this becomes more viable, or, or what would you, what would you say on that?
59:53: I think Of course, the more skilled you are as an author, the, the better your books are written, the more experience you have, of course, that's gonna translate into your foreign language strategies.
1:00:09: At the same time, we are seeing more and more authors publish in tandem.
1:00:15: So maybe the first book comes out in English and then comes out in German three months later.
1:00:22: And then Italian 3 months after that, and then the second book comes out in English, and then comes out in German 3 months later, and then Italian 3 months later, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
1:00:34: I think as long as you've got a really good solid strategy, and you've done your research, I don't, I, I don't see why not, and I don't like people to feel rushed or pressured into going into translation, but at the same time, if your book's not available for sale in Germany, Germans aren't going to buy it.
1:00:55: And basic math, you know, every day that your book is not available in Germany is another day that you're not selling books in Germany, and Germany is the 2nd largest Amazon market in the world, so.
1:01:09: OK, maybe you haven't been publishing like me for 20 years, but I wouldn't say that that necessarily is a barrier to publishing in translation.
1:01:17: Right.
1:01:18: As long as you're doing your research and you have a good strategy.
1:01:23: Let's go.
1:01:24: OK, so I have another question as an indie.
1:01:28: Cover design.
1:01:29: Do, are there different styles that resonate more with different markets, and do you need to go on ahead and commission a fresh cover, or can you use your same English cover and just swap out the title?
1:01:41: What would you recommend?
1:01:43: In general, I would say that you don't need new covers.
1:01:46: As long as you're happy with the covers that you've got, and there's, there's nothing in them that I might find objectionable in the target language, then no, I generally recommend authors that they can keep their cover as is and just change the title and the.
1:02:00: The subtitle.
1:02:01: And actually, depending on your target language, you might not even need to change the title.
1:02:07: It's quite common, for example, in Germany, where most people speak English or have a basic knowledge of English, to keep the English title.
1:02:19: And we're seeing that happen a lot more.
1:02:21: And that if you're not even changing the title, I don't see why you'd need to change the cover at all.
1:02:27: And for example, in Germany, they have a law, it's called the unique titling law.
1:02:32: Yes, you are not allowed to use a title that is the same or similar to a title that's already being used.
1:02:43: And there are 2 ways to get around that, generally.
1:02:46: One is simply to use your English title, if that's not already taken.
1:02:51: And the other option is just to add a subtitle.
1:02:55: So, let's say that your title is stalker.
1:02:59: It's a very common title.
1:03:01: I can guarantee there's already a book in German called Stalker.
1:03:05: But if you call your book Stalker.
1:03:08: A crime thriller set in 1970s Paris, then you can keep the title Stalker because it's different.
1:03:18: The subtitle makes it quantitatively different.
1:03:22: So, no, as a general rule, you can keep your covers as they are, and the only thing you might need to change is the title or the sub.
1:03:30: Interesting.
1:03:31: It's funny, I mentioned earlier about Kelly's translation of her title.
1:03:37: That she had done, and I sent her a message here while we were recording, and she got back to me.
1:03:42: So the English title, and this was being translated into German, the English title.
1:03:48: of her book was And Then We Sever, so that's the English title.
1:03:53: The machine translation came back, I, she didn't give me the German, so I can't read the German verbatim, but when that translated title was checked, the German Said basically, and then we throw up.
1:04:08: So it was to prove the point that, yeah, you should have a, a human, you should have a human checking these things.
1:04:15: In that case, is, is that a case where maybe just using the English title would have been fine, or maybe she was able to find, by the way, she was able to find, it was the word that was being used, which was Not technically.
1:04:29: Incorrect, though I, I believe it was a German word for for sever, but there was a different word that was better in that context.
1:04:37: So she was able to get that fixed, but it would it, would it have been just fine to use the English title instead?
1:04:44: Yes, as long as there isn't another book with the same or similar title.
1:04:49: and actually one of the things, one of the services that we offer is copyright compliance.
1:04:54: So we can take your title and send it off to a legal services company in Berlin, and they check all of the public.
1:05:05: Records, all of the library records to make sure that your title does not already exist, and if it does, they will make some suggestions on alternative options.
1:05:18: So, yeah, it's very, very.
1:05:19: Important to have a human check.
1:05:23: A native human check your titles because, and so often titles are idiomatic or they're a pun, or, you know, even if you think like Murder, She Wrote.
1:05:35: Imagine trying to translate that into another language and capture the cadence, the rhythm, you know, it's just not something that the AI can do reliably.
1:05:47: Right, right.
1:05:48: No, that, that makes sense, that makes sense.
1:05:50: We include titles free of charge as part of our service.
1:05:55: Excellent.
1:05:57: a question that I think is gonna come up for many authors because as we've been talking about this is, we've been talking about this as an investment, is the, the cost associated with this type of translation review.
1:06:13: What, what, what's your pricing model and if you're, I know we discussed and you were open to talking about this, and it sounds like you're very transparent about your pricing, which I think a lot of authors will appreciate.
1:06:24: What, what, what does it look like?
1:06:26: What's the cost to get a typical book translated and then reviewed by a human to, to make sure that it's, it's gonna pass the, the sniff test for the, the native reader.
1:06:39: OK, so your average novel is 80,000 words, and we have 3 tiers.
1:06:46: We have 3 different prices.
1:06:48: The basic tier is for authors who've already used scribe shadow, and they have a scribe shadow translation in hand.
1:06:57: And for those authors, we have a special discount.
1:07:00: Discounted price, it's 0.01 per word per language, so 80,000 words multiplied by 0.01 is €800 and that includes a professional human translator will read and edit the book, one full pass.
1:07:23: It also includes titles, blurbs, and.
1:07:28: And if you send us 3 or more of these manuscripts at once, we offer a 5% bulk order discount.
1:07:37: Then we have the middle tier, which you can come to us with your original English manuscript, and we will do the AI translation for you.
1:07:48: We will also do titles, blurbs, foreign language formatting, and any other little things that you might need, like your Facebook ad copy.
1:07:57: And that is charged at 0.014 a word.
1:08:04: So your 80,000 word manuscript.
1:08:08: Would be €1120.
1:08:12: And then we have our, and that's 1.5 passes, so one full read and edit, and then the team leader goes and does another pass.
1:08:21: And then we have our VIP service, and this is the one that we recommend for high stakes publishing if your manuscript is going to be made into an.
1:08:31: Aaudiobook, for example, we recommend the VIP service because it's really focusing on that rhythm, that cadence, the dialogue.
1:08:40: If your genre is high fantasy or lit RPG, then we recommend the VIP service.
1:08:48: And that starts from 0 point, whoops.
1:08:54: 80,000 words, 0.02 per word, per language, so that's 80,000 words, €1600.
1:09:04: And with the VIP you get 3 passes.
1:09:07: So one pass in tandem, English target language, one pass a second time, just the target language, no English.
1:09:17: And then you get the 3rd pass with the team leader going through doing that cadence, rhythm, dialogue, style, humor, all the extra tweaking.
1:09:28: Mhm.
1:09:29: That's just the manuscript, not like the glossary or anything, cause, you know, high fantasy, we have glossaries.
1:09:35: Well, yes, and actually, when we do high fantasy at the VIP tier, we create a glossary.
1:09:43: OK.
1:09:44: From the start, from page one where we start recording all of your characters, all of your mythical creatures, all of your invented terms, incantations, prophecies, poems, whatever you've got, we get it in that glossary, and that way we can maintain consistency, not just throughout the book.
1:10:04: But throughout the whole series.
1:10:07: And that's why we always recommend high fantasy lit RPG really has to come in at the slightly more expensive tier, because it's not just because the manuscripts are more demanding, it's because the readers are more.
1:10:21: When you're reading high fantasy and lit RPG, it's not just for the plot.
1:10:26: It's for the beauty and the nuance of the language, and that's why you need 3 passes.
1:10:34: Good to know.
1:10:35: And for our American viewers and listeners, a quick euro to dollar conversion and keep in mind that this can change, but €1000 it's not that different.
1:10:49: No, I think it's about €1000 is about $1100 US dollars currently.
1:10:56: That can change.
1:10:58: But, but it's fairly close.
1:11:00: So if you're if you're, and we charge in euros, not in dollars.
1:11:05: So yeah.
1:11:06: Is there anything that anybody else should know, like as far as before they, they come to work with you, anything else that they should be thinking about?
1:11:14: Obviously we talked about like doing your research and all of that ahead of time.
1:11:18: Any other things that are maybe common mistakes that, that you'd want to see people avoid in the future.
1:11:27: Before they, they come to you.
1:11:30: I think I would like to see authors letting go of their preconceptions and misconceptions about translation in general, because I think that there's a lot of fear involved and there's a lot of assumptions that we make as English speakers about what's going on in Europe.
1:11:50: Or in Latin America, and I think that we need to let go of some of those misconceptions.
1:11:55: I mean, who knew that French people buy 17 paperbacks a year, you know, and it's all of these kind of local knowledge that I think once we let go of our preconceptions and open ourselves up to learning.
1:12:08: About new cultures and new languages, that's when it really starts to get fun.
1:12:13: But if there's anything I could add, it would be, let's have a conversation.
1:12:17: You don't have to figure it all out yourself.
1:12:21: My inbox is always open and you can always.
1:12:24: Email me with your questions, concerns, problems, because there's nothing, I'm sure you can tell from talking to me for the last hour or so, but like, I love to have a chat, and having a chat with authors is literally my job.
1:12:40: So if you have questions, concerns, queries, just drop me a line.
1:12:44: I think that there's very few things, problems that we can't solve together.
1:12:47: I love that.
1:12:49: No, that's, that's, that's because I'm sure there will be people who.
1:12:53: Like you said, there's, there's some maybe hesitation involved for somebody who hasn't done this before.
1:12:59: It's open, our conversation has opened my mind up to this.
1:13:02: I'm already like, man, I should, there's things I should be doing here, especially when you said, you know, like there's money you're leaving on the table, but I, I appreciate, I appreciate that.
1:13:13: And that's something like at Book Funnel here, we, we, we try to do the same thing.
1:13:17: If somebody has never used Book Funnel before, and they're, they're curious, and they email our support, we answer back and answer all their questions.
1:13:25: And so I love that you're willing to do the same thing there, because I feel like some authors are maybe used to.
1:13:32: You know, unless you're paying somebody for that service, you're not gonna get, you're not gonna be able to hear from them or get any support at all.
1:13:40: So that's good to.
1:13:41: So far I haven't started charging for the conversation.
1:13:44: And Max, you don't know this, but I actually had an email thread with you years.
1:13:49: Ago because your company did one of my translations and it was such a nice experience.
1:13:54: Like, so I'm just, that's just my personal endorsement.
1:13:58: It was yay.
1:13:59: And I always tell people like, I have the best job in the world because all I do pretty much all day every day is write nice letters to authors.
1:14:07: It's all correspondence and all of the business that I do is done by hand.
1:14:12: So you can send me your books and I will prepare your invoice by hand.
1:14:16: It's all very personal and, and I think that that's important because taking your books into a new market is a really big step.
1:14:25: Mhm.
1:14:25: And I'm, I'm here to help you do that.
1:14:28: Absolutely.
1:14:30: All right, well, Max, thank you for joining us.
1:14:34: This was a great conversation and we'll, we'll definitely have to have you back in the future, especially, cause this is an evolving landscape.
1:14:41: So I imagine in even in 6 months, there's gonna probably be some, something new to talk about here, but before we go, anything else or anything last, any last words you'd like to mention here before we wrap up?
1:14:54: Just thank you so much for having me.
1:14:56: It's such an honor to be on your podcast when you've had all my heroes, so many of my heroes have been on your.
1:15:01: Michael Evans, it's his fault that I'm here, by the way.
1:15:04: Michael Evans was the one that pushed me out of the nest and made me do this.
1:15:10: I love Ellen, Joe Salari, Sasha, like it's just such a privilege, and I would love to come back anytime that you're willing to have it.
1:15:18: We, we will definitely have you back.
1:15:20: It will definitely.
1:15:22: Thank you.
1:15:23: Please do, please do.
1:15:25: thank you, of course, to my co-host, Emma, for joining me for this episode.
1:15:31: I appreciate your help as always.
1:15:34: even though in the future here you're gonna see some more varied co-hosts, we're gonna have a few more people show up.
1:15:40: So I wanna, I wanna make this note here, just so you might see some new faces, but I appreciate it whenever, Emma and.
1:15:47: Kelly you're here, and today is just Emma, but, I really do appreciate your support.
1:15:53: I couldn't do it without you, Emma, or whoever else is here helping me.
1:15:58: So thank you for that.
1:15:59: And thank you, of course, to you, our viewers.
1:16:01: If you're watching here on YouTube, make sure you are subscribed to the channel and you like this video, and leave a comment, maybe about your one or two takeaways.
1:16:10: I'm sure there's, there's quite a few you could take away from this conversation.
1:16:14: And if you are listening to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or anywhere else, please follow us there and leave a review.
1:16:21: It really does help.
1:16:22: From all of us here at Book Funnel, I wanna thank you for watching and listening.
1:16:25: And we'll see you all in the next one.
1:16:28: Thank you for watching.
1:16:30: Check out these other videos from Book Funnel, and don't forget to subscribe to the channel.