German version of honor harington

Im curious! Why we can't have those German books of honor harington in English? I would love to read them!

It is common practice for European publishers to take one of David's books and cut them up into smaller installments. Europe (or even Germany in particular) does not get exclusive content.

Potato wrote:It is common practice for European publishers to take one of David's books and cut them up into smaller installments. Europe (or even Germany in particular) does not get exclusive content.

It's why I vote with my wallet and avoid any publisher that does that like the plague. It's bad enough when they split the books, but when they charge full price for the split books they can go and #¤!% themselves.

Potato wrote:
It is common practice for European publishers to take one of David's books and cut them up into smaller installments. Europe (or even Germany in particular) does not get exclusive content.

It's why I vote with my wallet and avoid any publisher that does that like the plague. It's bad enough when they split the books, but when they charge full price for the split books they can go and #¤!% themselves.

That isn´t even the worse thing. Why do they need so long to translate the books? The German vision of "Shadow of Voctory" comes in Febuary 2018. How long is that after the first publishing in english? For sure: too long!

Maldorian wrote:

Potato wrote:
It is common practice for European publishers to take one of David's books and cut them up into smaller installments. Europe (or even Germany in particular) does not get exclusive content.

It's why I vote with my wallet and avoid any publisher that does that like the plague. It's bad enough when they split the books, but when they charge full price for the split books they can go and #¤!% themselves.

That isn´t even the worse thing. Why do they need so long to translate the books? The German vision of "Shadow of Voctory" comes in Febuary 2018. How long is that after the first publishing in english? For sure: too long!

Bastei-Lübbe (that's the german publisher of the Honorverse-books) faces the same problem as Baen - they only have a limited number of slots they can fill with new books each month. Add the time for translation of the book - I don't know then they get the manuscript from Baen. And because any new Honorverse-book will pulished in 2 parts they need 2 publication slots, too. 2 slots that shouldn't be to far away from each other ... I am surprised they are able to do that in less than 18 month time!

Eagleeye wrote:Bastei-Lübbe (that's the german publisher of the Honorverse-books) faces the same problem as Baen - they only have a limited number of slots they can fill with new books each month. Add the time for translation of the book - I don't know then they get the manuscript from Baen. And because any new Honorverse-book will pulished in 2 parts they need 2 publication slots, too. 2 slots that shouldn't be to far away from each other ... I am surprised they are able to do that in less than 18 month time!

The translation process cannot begin until the final manuscript (i.e. the proofread and edited version) has been delivered. Once that's done, the foreign publisher has to contract the translator to do his or her thing (which depends on said translator's availability; for a series like this, it is preferable to have every installment translated by the same person), and only once the translated manuscript has been delivered can the book production pipeline get started.

For a normal book, it takes a year from manuscript delivery to the book actually appearing in stores. For a translated work, unless the various publishers work closely together (see for example the Harry Potter series), a delay of two to three years between the original release and the translated release is the norm.

I'm sure I once read an explanation of why the German publishers split the books which amounted to slightly more than a Machiavellian wish to sell 2 books instead of one, but I've forgotten. Could some kind and knowledgeable poster remind me?

Probably size, the last mainline book published unsplit in Germany was rather massive: 900 pages, 6 cm/2.4 inch thick (figure from amazon product description), even topping Clancy's doorstoppers "Debt of Honor" and "Executive Orders". You could print on thinner paper but this has its problems as well and when you have a series already, that probably tips the balance.

At least the German versions are much higher quality than what Baen puts out as paperbacks: Those feature not just thin paper (here necessary to keep size down) but also smearing ink and inconsistent margins.

Randomiser wrote:I'm sure I once read an explanation of why the German publishers split the books which amounted to slightly more than a Machiavellian wish to sell 2 books instead of one, but I've forgotten. Could some kind and knowledgeable poster remind me?

That was me, I think I‘m the only resident German speaking bookseller.

There are a few reasons for this, most of them actually apply to all versions:
- Visiblity is limited, online as offline. A boostore only has so many shelves and so many spots to put new arrivals. Bookstores won‘t fill all their shelves and spots with books from one publisher, which means the number of books a publisher can get into bookstores per month per genre is limited. The same is also true for online channels, book blogs etc. It‘s not likely that you can get good visibility for dozens of books.
- The average regularly reader buys probably around two books a month. If you publish too many books you‘re actually competing with yourself. No publisher wants that.
- If too many new arrivals are of the same (sub-)genre, it will hurt sales, because the average reader will not buy them all. He might buy them the next month, but if they‘re not on the shelves anymore, he‘ll most likely pick on of the new arrivals instead.
- More books are sold in winter than in summer.
- A too big book hurts sales, optimally a book has between 80 000 and 100 000 words. Above that, sales drop unless the author is well known enough to make customers buy the book anyway. There is a reason The philosopher’s stone only has 77k words.
- Optimally a book costs around $10. More expensive books need to be from well known authors or it will hurt sales.
- Traditionally (in Europe) there are the new catalogues each year: one for spring & summer and one for autumn & winter.
- Logisticall constraints
- Normal sized standalone novells are better gifts than big & expensive 10th volume in a series.
- Some authors are well known enough for their books being sold well regardless of season.
- The more words, the more money the publisher has to invest until the book is avaiable. Thus, they‘re unlikely to publish a book of an unknown author which has more than 120‘000 words.
- There is an upper price limit. If a book gets too expensive, no one or a lot fewer people will buy it.

Of course, publishers plan with those things in mind. Optimally they want to have a good book for every type of reader per month. Not having a book for one type of reader is going to hurt sales. With the publishers having to have the new catalogues for spring & summer in the hands of the booksellber by January, they‘ll have to decide in summer /ealry autumn which book are going to be published up to a year in advance.
So if RFC turns in a book late and the german publisher (who is not as trusting as Tony) will not plan with the book before the book is being published in English. Even then, a few more months might pass till the optimal publishing spot. Which easily can add up to more than 12 months.

I don‘t think I haver to tell anyone here how many words RFC‘s books have, so if RFC didn‘t have such a big fanbase, he wouldn‘t be able to sell his books to publishers. The german language is about a 1/3 longer than English, so RFC‘s books would easily reach the 800 pages mark in German.
Translation cost money, There is the orignal publisher, the literary agency, the author, the translater and the proofreader to be paid. Most of the time in advance. Having split a book in two or even three parts allow the publisher to have less expenses in advance. They also can avoid hiting the upper price limit (around 20 Euros in Germany) or having a book on the shelves which is way to big for good sales. Also having three good books with good sales in your catalogue is better than having one, too big book.