Today, AmazonCrossing has announced that it will make a significant commitment to translating a number of foreign bestselling titles and highly acclaimed books into English.
The $10 million commitment will be parsed out over the next five years to “increase the number and diversity of its books in translation,” according to the statement from AmazonCrossing.
The translation imprint of Amazon Publishing, AmazonCrossing is one of the largest publishers of translated books in the United States. In 2015, the imprint published 77 books from 15 countries, representing 12 languages.
The $10 million will mostly go toward paying translators to work on foreign titles to increase the AmazonCrossing list. In five years since inception, the imprint has translated more than 200 books from 29 countries, written in 19 languages.
How will AmazonCrossing select the titles? Authors, publishers and agents can go to a website to suggest titles. The project is looking for books in the following categories: mystery, thriller, women’s fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, memoir, science fiction and fantasy.
Books that are already popular in their homelands tend to rise to the top: AmazonCrossing has already translated “German author Oliver Pötzsch’s million-copy bestselling Hangman’s Daughter series, Korean author Bae Suah’s acclaimed novella Nowhere to Be Found and Turkish author Ayse Kulin’s Kindle bestseller Last Train to Istanbul,” according to the release.
For 2016, the plan is to translate the next book, Pierced by the Sun, by Mexican author Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate), and Polish crime writer Zygmunt Miloszewski’s Rage.
