The Digital Book World 2013 panels, “Sales Across Borders: Export” and “Sales Across Borders: Import” (back to back on Wednesday afternoon) were both concerned with the question of what new digital systems best allow books to travel across international boundaries—though their approaches were hardly two sides of one coin.
On the Export panel, there was more or less uniform agreement among the panelists (all of whom work for major US distributors) that successful digital export depends on three main components: globally integrated POD systems; platform agnosticism (referring here to a single system’s ability to distribute print or digital titles as needed), and good global partnerships with local etailers. In contrast, the Import panel focused on what made each panelist’s international ebook sales approach unique. Most ambitious is Bastei Lübbe’s International Digital department: since being founded in 2010, it has identified English, Spanish, and Chinese as its three target language markets, and is undertaking its own translations and negotiating sales relationships with etailers around the world. The next move, said Bastei Lübbe International Sales Manager Marion König, is to acquire original English-language content to sell around the world in the original English and in translation. A more hybrid approach is Open Road Media’s “publishing partnerships” with European publishers. While Open Road does the English-language marketing and distributing of various translated titles, translation and editorial remain the original publishers’ responsibility.
No matter the system or partnership by which books reach international readers, the question of what convinces them to buy remains. On the export side, US Publishers need to recognize the ways in which their existing metadata is US-centric, and how to make changes that appeal to different cultural contexts, said Ingram’s Kelly Gallagher. Local context also applies to pricing, but doesn’t always mean “go cheaper,” said Cyrus Kheradi. Looking at the demographics of their ebook customers in India, Random House’s International Sales team came to the conclusion that “For now, the majority of our customers are from the top 5% economically—if they want a title, they’re willing to pay.” When it’s time to reach the next demographic, then reconsider pricing. For more direct marketing approaches, however, both Import and Export panels had similarly abstract answers; it looks like, for now, the words “social media buzz” retain their worldwide appeal.
The elephant in both rooms was Subsidiary Rights. Given that translation is traditionally associated with Rights sales, the Import panel’s examples of original publishers commissioning—and then selling—their own translations abroad illustrated one way in which the lines between the roles of Rights and International Sales departments are blurred by digital distribution capabilities. The wider implications of this “blurring” in the long run went untouched, however. Rights weren’t directly addressed in the Export panel until an audience member asked at the end of the session: “Have ebooks changed export so much that the role of Sub Rights will have to change, too?” Chitra Bopardikar said that for Perseus, “digital export has not yet changed our sub-rights practices,” while Cyrus Kheradi went so far as to say that “Random House still believes the best thing for a title is to have its own publisher in each different territory. We prioritize Rights,” closing an hour of discussion of “new horizons” on a strikingly conservative note, and highlighting the persistence of traditional structures when it comes to dealing with non-traditional forms of media—even at DBW.
