The most interesting thing I found in all this is just how poorly WoT has sold in Portugal. Apparently this may not be an isolated case. Could it be that the lengthy tomes that Anglo-American epic fantasy fans prefer is an exception and not the rule for the tastes of global SF/F readers?
You might be drawing the wrong conclusion, based on the French case at least.
I don't think the sub-group that enjoys "the bigger the better" is an anglo-saxon phenomenon at all, whether in Fantasy or not. There's the same group of readers who salivate over door-stoppers, in Fantasy, or in thrillers, or mainstream novels and on and on, and there are those who like it short and sweet and who prefer stand-alones over series. It's not like Americans invented "pop lit" door-stoppers.. just think of Tolstoy, Dumas, Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Yoshikawa, Luigi Natoli, Sue etc. Most of those fall in the "popular literarure" and "best selling" category (esp. Dumas, Yoshikaw, Natoli, Hugo, Sue), and all of them wrote HUGE books, often multi-volume stories. You'll find the same group of "big books" and never-ending sagas in Russian literature, and Scandinavian literature and I suspect in most others. Japanese love serialesque stuff a lot too, and apparently WOT sells very well there.
Yes, but most of those examples you give are from different time periods and genres. I was trying to think of possible reasons (besides the most obvious one that I didn't state in my original post, on purpose) why for modern-day epic fantasies, those huge tomes don't sell as well in translation. And it should be noted that reader habits were quite different back in the days of Dumas and Dickens, as the stories were really 25-50 page monthly chunks and the serials sold better than the collated editions for a long while.
In Québec, one of the biggest bestsellers in recent years is a 10-volume (all door-stoppers) series written over nearly 20 years. The final two volumes have outsold The Lost Symbol locally.
I think "big" has pretty much the same attraction here it has in the US/UK, as far as Fantasy goes. The reasons American Fantasy (and most of SF) door-stoppers sell poorly in the French market are more:
- It is very poorly marketed and basically not publicized. Fantasy has nowhere near the exposure of other genres, and it doesn't come even close to the exposure it gets in America (which is small, compared to mainstream and other genres). American Fantasy writers are pampered cry-babies in comparison to how the genre is regarded in French culture.
That I believe would be a major factor.
- It's fairly recent that the genre enjoys *any* popularity (again, I would say.. we have classics of related "supernatural" lit. - even Dumas wrote in that genre a bit), and it's due in part to the LOTR revival with the movies, and to Harry Potter. Classics like Narnia didn't even interested any publisher in France before Harry Potter... It's only then it got its first translation (that didn't sell very well). The genre is a good 2-3 decades behind its state in the Anglo-saxon market, the post-Tolkien phenomenon is largely unknown in France and French-speaking countries, aside from a "fringe" phenomenons in the teenager audience. There is presently a "wave" of Fantasy written in French, some properly post-Tolkien and more post-Potter but so far it's by and large a children literature phenomenon. For adults, you pretty much need to be Susannah Clarke to break the genre barrier and get to the top of the BS list, and quality aside, that has something to do with the fact she was backed by a major publisher in translation too. Writers like Anne Robillard outsells Jordan or Martin many times in the French market and pretty much matches stuff like Twilight, and quite a few others do as well. Fantasy for adults is still very rare and the less popular "elitist" Fantasy like Gene Wolfe's doesn't even get translated (it wouldn't sell). There's Elizabeth Vonarburg, heavily influenced by the golden age American SF and Guy Gavriel Kay (whom she also translates, and very well too). She's pretty much the French-Canadian GG Kay, writes really well and unlike most American writers in their market she's pretty much considered on the same footing as the mainstream novelists by the critics and milieu, but her sales are modest (she makes the best selling list here, the mainstream ones, but not for long and nowhere near the top). And oh... she writes 500-600- pages books, most of them 5-6 volumes series.
But couldn't it be argued that it's different styles or "favors" of genre fiction that sell better in some countries compared to others? I'm much more familiar with the Argentine, Mexican, and Spanish markets and it seems most of the "genre" works there written in Spanish tend to differ significantly from what is popular in Anglo-American markets. Maybe the same is true in Quebec?
- Most of Fantasy isn't released by major publishers (who consider it trash, to say things plainly), and most of those books can't be found reliably. Very frequently they're back ordered and you have to wait months and more for them to get reprinted. Waiting months to get to read the middle of A Game of Throne or a WOT book, that's very discouraging, especially when you can't be sure it won't happen again further down the line. Many friends who unlike me read translations have given up on several series for that reason. There are a few exceptions to the rule, for instance a few anglo-Canadian writers like GG Kay have been picked up and translated by a high quality small local publisher (also Vonarburg's, and our one and only genre lit. publisher). Kay most likely outsells Jordan, Brooks, Goodkind and Martin combined (in translation only, they sell loads in English though). Bakker, Erikson? As far as I know, they aren't translated. They don't suit the tastes of the core of the Fantasy readers (too young), and the adult market is too small.
Bakker is available in French and I seem to recall reading that Erikson is as well. Whether or not books published in France would be available in Quebec is an entirely different matter, though. SOIAF I know is published in full volumes in Spain and Martin, Bakker, and Sapkowski are fairly popular there as well. But from what I recall of the Portuguese and Brazilian markets, what's popular in Spanish isn't necessarily going to be popular in Portuguese-language editions.
- The cultural strength of English means most of us read a very great deal more of foreign works in translation than the average anglo-saxon has to. Our standards got higher for their quality, and most Fantasy literature, even the best-selling writers, gets extremely poor and cheap translation (the sort Harlequin books get), beside the precious few that become a phenomenon and gets picked by the major publishers (like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, Clarke and the likes). If you think Robert Jordan writes poorly, try him in French. It's atrocious.
I'll take your word for it
I know the Spanish translation of Bakker's first novel is good and that the Spanish translation of Sapkowski's Geralt stories is superior to the English translation, but I can believe those to be the exceptions rather than the rule.- Finally, there's the financial issue. Most American Fantasy in translation is read by teenagers. A third of a Jordan, Martin, Brooks and co. book sells for a higher price than an hardcover in English does. A shabby paperback of a Jordan book (a third of an original WOT book) that makes Tor's PB look haut de gamme sells for over 15 dollars. Do you think Martin, Jordan and co. would enjoy nearly their popularity if people had to pay over three times the price they pay now to read them? How many would buy a 100$ HC of WOT? A 50$ PB?
That is the part I purposely left out, in part because it wasn't as major of a discussion point as the others raised in that link (I think it was taken for granted, though). But why split the books in the first place? Is it because the production costs are that much higher to have a 600 page MMPB compared to two 300 page books? Or is there something that tells the publishers that larger-sized books don't sell as well? That's what I'm puzzling over now.
And you know Larry... reading in at least two languages is sort of exceptional for Americans. That's not really true here, and even less so in Europe. Just judging from my extended personal circle, I more than a little suspect in a lot of markets, especially in Europe and Québec, a very great deal of American Fantasy lovers just don't bother with translations and read those books in English, and more so now than years ago. You'd have to look at the foreign sales of Orbit (and some of Tor) to get the real picture of sales for Jordan, Goodkind, Brooks and most of the "big names" in those countries. They sell more than in looks, only not in the local language.
Five languages, but point taken. I tend to buy works in their native languages whenever it's convenient, in part because I want to practice my language skills and in part because I don't trust the translators as much (a very ironic belief, considering something that will be announced officially in a few months
) as I do the native writers. That is likely a major factor in the lack of non-Anglo SF/F being available even in non-Anglo markets.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
Interesting discussion on the series, for the few here who can understand it
- 13/05/2010 11:15:27 PM
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Speaking for my own culture...
- 14/05/2010 01:04:54 AM
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Nice counterpoints
- 14/05/2010 01:54:07 AM
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Re: Nice counterpoints
- 14/05/2010 10:53:33 PM
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But some translations are actually quite good
- 14/05/2010 11:38:19 PM
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Re: But some translations are actually quite good
- 15/05/2010 02:15:11 AM
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Have they finally released Monaldi & Sorti in the original Italian now? 
- 15/05/2010 09:51:36 AM
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- 15/05/2010 09:51:36 AM
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Re: Have they finally released Monaldi & Sorti in the original Italian now?
- 15/05/2010 05:27:58 PM
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- 15/05/2010 05:27:58 PM
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Russia loves that sort of crap.
- 14/05/2010 03:59:52 PM
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After reading Alexey Pehov's first translated work, I can believe that 
*NM*
- 14/05/2010 04:12:07 PM
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*NM*
- 14/05/2010 04:12:07 PM
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You're just linking that because of the compliments they're making about you, admit it.
- 14/05/2010 09:00:35 PM
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- 14/05/2010 09:00:35 PM
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I did say I was made aware of this because of a link to my comments
- 14/05/2010 09:09:34 PM
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- 14/05/2010 09:09:34 PM
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