The Three Percent Problem. Chad W. Post
new products—word of mouth marketing is extremely effective. The more people who love what you’re doing and feel like they’re helping you to do it, the more they’ll get other people involved, and the more successful you’ll be.
It’s not a complicated concept, but one that sleek, savvy small presses are more likely to capitalize on than amorphous, nondescript commercial houses. Indies also have a chance to leap ahead in terms of using ebooks to reach readers. With a loyal fan base and authors who aren’t looking to make millions off their intellectual property, independent presses can play around with the current models, giving away free ebooks or selling them at a very low price, all in the interest of generating excitement about a particular author or work.
It was clear to me when HarperCollins announced a special iPhone tool allowing people to access excerpts of HC books by visiting the Harper website on their phone that the big presses are insanely out of touch. The activities of the Institute for the Future of the Book, such as their collaborative online reading of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, or their theorizing about how presses could be structured in a world where content is completely free, are much more cutting edge than what the big houses are doing.
One other thing worth mentioning is the nonprofit model and recent variations on it. Since the revenue stream for nonprofits is diversified—usually about 50% from sales, 50% from donations—these houses are more protected than other presses when the bottom falls out of the market. Granted, foundation giving is slowing up for the time being, but individuals are still donating. And individuals who understand the value of what nonprofit publishers do will continue to donate and help these presses through these rough times. Furthermore, collaborations between nonprofit presses and universities have proven to be very advantageous to both parties, giving the press additional, crucial resources, and giving the university new educational opportunities for its students.
With independent, nonprofit, and university presses doing most of the literature in translation, there’s a chance for the sales of translations to continue to grow in the coming years. As the industry retracts and readers of the literary community consolidate, translated literature could come to the fore, attracting new readers. And as more presses like Melville House, Archipelago, Europa Editions, Counterpath, Ugly Duckling, Graywolf, and Open Letter come onto the scene with reasonable expectations and a willingness to experiment with new ways of reaching readers and new models for how to survive and fulfill one’s mission, the literary world might not be as bleak as some might think.
Interlude:
“Giving the Fig”
I’m no marketing guru, but there is one rule of advertising that I think everyone should follow: if you dominate a market, never draw attention to your (smaller) competition. This is why Apple attacks Microsoft so directly in ads—for better or worse, Microsoft has a market share the size of a Chicagoan’s shoulders and Apple wants to bite that. Thus the direct, negative advertising.
So when Russian Life brought out a new translation of Ilf & Petrov’s The Golden Calf (or rather, The Little Golden Calf in Anne O. Fisher’s translation) at the exact same moment that we did, I totally ignored it. Sure, based on our contract it’s a violation of copyright, but shit, we all know how Russians deal with copyright issues (“the more the merrier!”), and really? Russian Life’s entire distribution system seems to consist of their website and Amazon.com. Fine, cool, whatever. Open Letter’s not afraid of a little competition—the new translation we commissioned from Helen Anderson and Konstantin Gurevich is brilliant, and has received outstanding praise from places like the L.A. Times and PRI’s World Books. I know it’s great. And if more people end up reading Ilf & Petrov’s hysterical masterpiece because there are two brand-new translations, then so much the better. The point is getting people to pick this up; no one’s going to make an Koreiko-like fortune off of the sales of this book. At least not for a hundred or so years.
So we didn’t send the cease and desist letter to Russian Life that we could have. And I never even bitched up a storm here on the blog. Why draw attention? There’s maybe a thousand people in the country who realize that two versions of this book even exist, and the rest of the people familiar with The Golden Calf are probably reading our edition.
But then . . . yesterday happened. And this page on the Russian Life website was sent out to—at minimum—the SEELANGS (Slavic & East European Languages) listserv and Nicole Rudick, who reviewed our edition of The Golden Calf in the L.A. Times.
In case you don’t feel like finding the original article—though trust me, this shit is hilarious—this page is a list of ten reasons why the Russian Life edition of The Little Golden Calf is superior to our version, ranging from the “Translator” to the “Cover Design”. Seriously? Propaganda is where you turn first in trying to jack our sales? (Before going any further, I want to point out what a stupid, stupid game this is . . .)
I’m not going to defend our book, or go through their list point by point rebutting each of their claims—it’s clear that Russian Life is bitter and jealous about the reviews we’ve been getting and this is their cry for attention—but in addition to having the collective back of our translators/editors/designers, I just can’t help myself . . . Some of the stuff on the Russian Life site is too much fun not to share with all of you.
First off, their criticism of the title. According to Russian Life’s unattributed post (and by the way, in case anyone is wondering, this is Chad writing—all these opinions are mine and don’t reflect the views and opinions of anyone else affiliated with Rochester, Open Letter, Three Percent, or Russia.):
Ilf and Petrov did not actually use “zolotoy telets,” the set Biblical phrase for “the Golden Calf.” Instead, they called their book Zolotoy telyonok, using the everyday, normal word for “calf” to deliberately lower the register of the Biblical image. We feel that a translation that misses Ilf and Petrov’s sly, intentional desacralization of the image of the Golden Calf misses the whole point of the title; the care we took in conveying this intention of the original title is emblematic of the care we took throughout the edition.
In other words, “The Little Golden Calf” is >>>>> “The Golden Calf.” Well, this confusion of accuracy for quality (a motif that runs throughout the Russian Life post) is pretty silly. Sure, telyonok is “little,” but as someone else pointed out, the “desacralization” just doesn’t come across in English via “little.” This is a problem in translating most diminutives, which is why we went with the straight “Golden Calf.”
And their “first complete translation” posturing is beyond insane. We’re all agreed that the previous translations are flawed, incomplete. And I’m willing to let pass the fact that our edition contains additional material that theirs doesn’t. Why? Because I know that Russian Life is placing the emphasis on first and not on complete. That they believe that they deserve special recognition since their edition supposedly came out a month-and-a-half before ours. Oddly, both of our pub dates were December 1st, but—again with the confusion—since the book was reviewed on January 15th, they assumed that was when copies became available. (We’ve had this in house and for sale since early-November. All real publishers know that pub dates are an artificial load of crap.) (Again, this is all so stupid.)
But sticking with the subject of reviews and confusion, there’s another page in which Russian Life breaks down a single passage, comparing the two variations, and finding that their edition is much superior, ‘natch. I’m not one to bash a translator, but I’m not above sucker punching a publisher, so let’s take a closer look at how they frame this “comparison.” First off, here’s the quote they use from our edition:
“Investigating Koreiko’s case might take a long time,” the character announces. “God only knows how long. And since there is no God, nobody knows. We are in a terrible bind. It might be a month, it might be a year. Either way, we need some legal standing. We need to blend in with the cheery masses of office workers. That’s what the bureau is all about. I have long been interested in [3] administration. I am a bureaucrat and a mis-manager at heart. We will be collecting [4] something very funny, for example, teaspoons, dog tags, or bells and whistles. Or horns