I am really excited to be back with Season 2 of The Make Books Travel Podcast! I took a break from recording new episodes earlier this fall to focus on the virtual Frankfurt Book Fair season.

On this episode I’m joined by Gillian Fizet. Gillian is Executive Director of the Canada FBM2020 Committee, the entity responsible for representing the Canada's Guest of Honor (GoH) program at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2020/21. As most of you know, the GoH program for 2020 has been postponed to 2021. 

I was curious to hear about her journey during this challenging year, Canada’s GoH program during the 2020 digital Frankfurt book fair, and how they’re going to prepare for the 2021 edition.

Some of the questions I asked Gillian:

- What has it been like to run this major international project in Canada’s official two languages (French and English) and represent Anglophone, Francophone and Indigenous literature? 

- Before the pandemic hit the world, what specific actions did you and your team undertake in order to prepare for the 2020 Frankfurt Book Fair? 

- As a result, how many Canadian books were planned to be published in German this year? 

- In July, Canada FBM2020 announced it was postponing the Frankfurt Book Fair Guest of Honor program to 2021. How did this come about? 

- Even though Canada’s physical Guest of Honor appearance has been moved up one year, you still had a digital program for this year’s virtual fair. Can you tell us some more about this? 

- Looking forward to next year, what are the next steps for you and your team? 

SHOW NOTES

- Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2019)

- Joan Didion, A Year of Magical Thinking (Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover & paperback edition, 2005)

- Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults (Europa Editions, 2020, translated by Ann Goldstein)

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.

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Welcome to episode #21 of the Make Books Travel podcast.

Today's guest is Daniel Bunyard, Publishing Director and Head of Non-Fiction Publishing at Penguin Michael Joseph in the UK.

Dan has been looking in detail at historical sales of books, in an effort to better understand what people’s book buying motivations and patterns are. Why did certain books sell well at a given moment in time, and why did others hardly sell any copies during that same period?

And what book buying patterns are we seeing in times of Corona?

These are fascinating and important questions to ask for us publishing folks. So let’s listen to my conversation with Daniel Bunyard!

Show Notes

Daniel Bunyard is a Publishing Director and Head of Non-fiction publishing at Penguin Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House. After starting his career in academic publishing, working on history and philosophy titles at Palgrave Macmillan, he worked successively for John Blake, Orion and HarperCollins before moving to Penguin as a commissioning editor for commercial non-fiction.

Daniel's paper on how publishing trends are influenced by historical context has not yet been published. I will update this information with the references once it's available. 

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.

– Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon (translated from the Italian by Jenny McPhee; NYRB Classics, 2017)

She also mentioned:

– Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman (translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori; Grove Press, 2018)

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.

For today’s show we’re going back overseas (at least from an American standpoint) as I’m speaking with Rita Fazenda from Portugal. Rita works as a publisher at one of Portugal’s major publishing houses called Leya Portugal.

The Portuguese publishing market has seen many challenges over the years. I wanted to ask Rita how things are looking now, with the additional restraints imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

I’m happy to say that at least one good thing is happening at the moment, namely the Lisbon Book Fair, which is held from late August till around mid-September.

It is an important event for Portuguese publishers, even more so now. While it’s always been an outdoor event (even in normal, pre-pandemic times), I was curious to hear what its set-up looks like in times of Corona.

Besides the Portuguese publishing market and the Lisbon Book Fair, Rita and I discuss many other topics including the hardships of selling translation rights in Portuguese books.

SHOW NOTES

- William Gibson, Neuromancer (Ace, 1984; new hardcover edition with introduction by Neil Gaiman, Penguin Galaxy, 2016)

Direção Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bibliotecas

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

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.

On  this episode of the Make Books Travel podcast I’m speaking with Becca Puglisi.

Becca is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and other books for writers.

Not only does Becca help make books travel in the US and other English speaking countries through her creative writing books and her coaching work, she also does so in other languages. 2 Seas Agency represents translation rights in her books, which have sold into numerous countries.

We discuss what led her to becoming a writing coach, the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on her activities, the success of her books specifically in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, and her #1 tip for aspiring authors.

SHOW NOTES

- Mary Pipher, PhD, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (Riverhead Trade, 2005)

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.

Today’s podcast guest is Rohit Bhargava.

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

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) 

Today I’m speaking with Maÿlis Vauterin, Rights Director at Editions Stock in France.

I’ve previously interviewed various rights sellers about one specific type of subsidiary rights sales: the sale of translation rights. This means that a book is translated in another language and published in the local market of that language.

In this episode however, Maylis and I discuss another type of subsidiary rights sales - and therefore a different potential income stream for authors - which is the licensing of audiovisual rights. We specifically cover movie and TV adaptations, as well as a relative newcomer in the book licensing world: podcast adaptations.

Enjoy!

PS: I'm excited to start including a "Show Notes" section below, which will mention the book recommendations from the guest of each specific episode.

SHOW NOTES

Maÿlis recommends the following three books:

The 13th episode of the Make Books Travel Podcast welcomes Andrew Singer, Director of the literary journal Trafika Europe and of the literary radio station Trafika Europe Radio.

This is the first time that the podcast features an interview with someone who is not either a rights seller or a rights buyer. Yet Andrew plays a very important role in making books travel. His literary journal and radio station have enabled the discovery of many European authors’ work outside of their local and national borders. On several occasions, this has led to their work being translated and published in English in book format.

So I was very excited to talk to Andrew and in particular to ask him about his latest project, Trafika Europe Radio. 

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