Last week we reached a rights milestone here at Nosy Crow – we sold our 40th language when we sold Vietnamese rights to HerStory.
As Kate tweeted, “In a way, 40 languages doesn’t feel like a lot, maybe, but you try naming 40 languages. It’s harder than it seems”.
Today, we sold Vietnamese rights to Herstory (https://t.co/OslWdirpXH). That’s the 40th language in which we’ve sold rights, if you count US English a separate language. In a way, 40 languages doesn’t feel a lot, maybe, but you try naming 40 languages. It’s harder than it seems.
— Nosy Crow (@NosyCrow) June 15, 2018
And this is why we have now invested in a scratch map to visualise each of the territories we are breaking into!
The more languages we sell, the smaller the pool of available territories, and the harder it is to sell to new ones. Whilst this Vietnamese deal might not hold the most weight financially, our excitement stems from knowing we are getting our titles translated into more languages, and therefore into more children’s hands! I feel incredibly lucky to watch, learn and contribute to the process of making a book international, and getting that book out into the world.
I am particularly happy about the fact that we sold our 40th language for HerStory, a book we have now sold to 12 territories (Czech Republic, France, Israel, Korea, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain EU, Spain SA, Ukraine, United States, Vietnam). As a book that explores diversity by celebrating women around the world, this title encapsulates not only the international outlook of the books that we create, but also the values that we hold as a company. This is something I think we are all particularly proud of.
In her blog post, In praise of “back office”, Kate wrote that “we have yet to sell rights in languages beginning with alphabetical letters beyond U”. Well, now we have! And I hope that in the future this too will be revised when we sell to the W, X, Y and Z’s of the world.
If you haven’t yet discovered HerStory, here’s a look inside the book:
