Amazon AmazonCrossing is celebrating its fifth birthday with a $10 million investment to increase the number and diversity of books in translation and is looking for submissions from authors of foreign-language books.
The Amazon Publishing imprint claims to be one of the biggest publishers of translated literature in the US, with 77 titles from 15 countries and in 12 languages being published in the US this year.
The $10 million investment will be phased over five years and will go toward fees to translators and increasing the countries and languages represented on the AmazonCrossing list, which since 2010 has included more than 200 titles by authors from 29 countries writing in 19 languages.
AmazonCrossing has set up a new website for authors, agents and publishers to suggest titles for translation at translation.amazon.com/submissions. and is now accepting submissions in the mystery, thriller, women’s fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, memoir, science fiction and fantasy categories.
AmazonCrossing Publisher Sarah Jane Gunter says, ‘We launched AmazonCrossing five years ago to introduce readers to voices of the world through English-language translations of foreign-language books. While we are now one of the largest publishers of translated literature in the United States, translated fiction is still a tiny fraction of new publications.
‘We are committing $10 million to translations to bring more international writers to new audiences. Our new website for submissions will help us cast a broader net in finding great books for translation, with the hope of increasing the number of acquisitions from countries that are traditionally underrepresented in translation.”
Over the past five years, AmazonCrossing has published significant works such as German author Oliver Pötzsch’s million-copy best-selling Hangman’s Daughter series (illustration pictured at the top of this post), Korean author Bae Suah’s acclaimed novella Nowhere to Be Found and Turkish author Ayse Kulin’s Kindle best-seller Last Train to Istanbul.
The 2016 list includes the coup of a new novel from worldwide best-selling Mexican author Laura Esquivel, who wrote the smash hit Like Water for Chocolate. Her novel, Pierced by the Sun, a tale of murder and redemption translated from Spanish by Jordi Castells, will be published in June 2016.
The firm has also signed up award-winning Polish crime writer Zygmunt Miloszewski, and his novel, Rage, will be published in July 2016, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, winner of the 2014 Paszport Polityka prize for literature.
For more details or to propose titles for translation, go to translation.amazon.com/submissions. You can also see AmazonCrossing books available at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
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