[KatG]

For a long time, these markets weren't very global -- it was assumed that readers were mostly not interested in foreign authors, even many English-speaking ones, but that's changing. The U.S. finally got around to regularly importing sff writers from Australia, for instance.

Which is in English, of course.

Right, which is my point. They're still playing catch-up. The SFF category market -- where the bulk of sff gets published in the U.S. -- is definitely behind other areas of fiction in exploring foreign authors. In contemporary fiction, foreign authors are now pretty regular additions. But there's not been a lot of incentive for the SFF category market, which is mostly paperback, to search out and do a lot of foreign importing. Which is why you and other authors going to Frankfurt is probably an excellent thing.

SFF has also been hurt in that it has been a one-way street for sff exports for a long time too. It used to be that only the very biggest names in U.S. sff had a chance of foreign publishers, and it would be unlikely that sff editors would go to Frankfurt. That's changed over the last decade or so, as the market has become much more global. So I think we'll be seeing a good bit more of foreign authors over here, one way or another.

And we are pretty good about importing Japanese manga for some reason -- I guess through the anime connection that was established through the comics industry. There's a market for it here. But there's no question that the U.S. market is very conservative and cautious.

[Vanin]

Hello Maryson
This collection sounds very interesting, do you have anymore info about it? Contributors, are the stories SF or Fantasy, or both?

I haven't heard anything about it yet.
I think the tentative title is "Eurofantastique: The SFWA European Hall of Fame", scheduled for June 2007. I may be mistaken but I think one of the stories from this book should be "Yoo Retoont, Sneogg. Ay Noo" (http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article.php?lab=Yoo) by Marek S. Huberath treanslated from the Polish by Michael Kandel.

One problem for the U.S., Britain, etc. has been getting the English translations done. It adds to the cost and since a lot of the sff market here is paperback, it becomes difficult to do. (...) Britain offers the best bet as an entry way, maybe, since they are part of the European Union.
(...) It's nice to hear that sff may be growing in some non-English territories too.

Translations always add to the cost, but then again I think it's the publishers that are to blame for the lack of interest in new names. I can easily imagine a EU sponsored tranlation of a European writer. All in the name of promoting of the cultural diversity. It only needs some initiative, I think.

And trust me, sf&f outside of the English-speaking world is doing great. We regularly get new German, Spanish or Russian authors here, because there are two basic conditions met: readers are bored with the repetitive Anglo-Saxon sf&f (with few notable exceptions but still) and are looking for something original, something offering a different cultural pespective, and secondly, publishers are willing to risk and acquire foreign rights. The best thing is, it works the other way round too - there are more and more Polish writers being translated into Spanish or German and since our publishers have a very good knowledge of Russian sf&f they recommend them to Spanish publishers, for instance. Just look at the list of authors in one of the Spanish publishing houses (http://www.bibliopolis.org/editorial/bibliofan.htm). So, we are fairly up to date with contemporary European sf&f as opposed to Americans or Brits, who seem to be closed in their own cultural circle.

[Maryson]

It is indeed the SFWA European Hall of Fame, with stories by Elena Arsenieva (Russia), Jean-Claude Dunyach and Jean Marc Ligny (France), Valerio Evangelisti (Italy), Andreas Eschbach (Germany), W.J. Maryson (Netherlands), Marek S, Huberath (Poland), Zoran Zivkovic (Serbia), Ricardo de la Casa and Pedro Jorge Romero (Spain) and, as far as I know also a Czech story.

[KatG]

Translations always add to the cost, but then again I think it's the publishers that are to blame for the lack of interest in new names. I can easily imagine a EU sponsored tranlation of a European writer. All in the name of promoting of the cultural diversity. It only needs some initiative, I think.

One problem is that we don't have any government subsidies to publishers in the U.S. for cultural diversity or anything else. They do some in Canada, and it may happen in the EU, but not America. There is a big interest in the U.S. in "ethnic fiction" which includes foreign authors. The Scandanavian authors have been coming in on mysteries, for instance, and I've seen Polish and Spainish authors reviewed in editions here.

But sff has been somewhat handicapped by being seen as a small, separate category market -- one that has its own culture. That's only recently changed. To feed the beast that sff has now become, and with increasing cross-marketing between the category sff and non-category sff here, foreign authors will be more in demand. Again, Britain, as part of the EU, is more likely to lead the way at first. If Britain is balking at publishing foreign-language sff, then that's a bigger surprise.

The U.S. does not have just one culture, though I know consummer-wise, it seems so. But we're large and we have big differences regionally, which can greatly effect sales here. Contemporary fiction, which is more regionally-based in reading audience, sports more foreign translations. SFF, which is a nationally-based market, is going to be slower. But a lot of fans in the U.S. are chomping at the bit for non-anglo-saxony sff too.

And trust me, sf&f outside of the English-speaking world is doing great.

Now that is good news, because as you can see, when we started this thread, and others like it earlier, it did not sound as if European sff was doing all that well. We kept getting told that it was regarded as just fiction for kids and most of it was imports from the English market. So if that's been changing over the last several years, that's terrific, and should lead to increased globalization.

[Įmberor]

Hi, i write from Spain, and the fantasy market has grown a lot last years. About ten years ago, the only books that you can find about fantasy was Conan, Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, and Elric, and just a little more. And only two or three publishing house.
But it has growed a lot, there are a lot of Spanish autors publishing now with great success, and there is a great fantasy anual prize (Premio Minotauro) with books of good quality, and there are almost ten publishing houses.

There are also autors from other countries, like Andrzej Sapkowski and Feliks W. Kres from Poland, Kiril Yeskov, Sergei Lukyanenko, or Max Frei from Russian, Joćo Barreiros from Portugal, Khristo Poshtakov from Bulgary, Anne Robillard and Steven Erikson from Canada, and W. J. Maryson from Holland.

And the fantasy is slowly changing the view of books for the younger, and getting a more adult point of view.

I expect this get better with the years :D

[Ntschotschi]

There is a big market for Fantasy in Germany and there are more and more good and excellent German authors e.g. Tobias Meissner but the problem is imo that the editors are very conservative especially the big houses.
They rather buy established English authors than take a risk with an unconventional newcomer.
The best innovative fantasy books I read in the past years have been published by small press.
Maybe that's going to change since the prices for foreign = english manusripts skyrocketed in the past.

It took some very fine authors e.g. Georg Klein (who won the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis) years to get published, because of this attitude.
I think that the US are generally more broadminded towards unconventional Fantasy writers who get then bought by German houses having been successes abroad.