It was some time I was wondering how to start working more on Literary translation. Don’t get me wrong, I love all my clients, and some projects are so nice to manage but, also being  a writer, what’s better than translating a BOOK or a NOVEL?

So for some months I made my researches, to see what other professionals were doing to enter in this difficult world and tried to understand which would be the best option and how to approach the whole thing.

Unitl now, I have translated a good number of novels, for an American publishing house, but obviously, no translator’s name on it, nothing if a good rate and many compliments by the client. That couldn’t be a good business card to contact a Publishing House. With hundreds of Italian translators willing to operate in this field, my name would have been trashed like many others. No way.

A second option was to seal the ocean of not translated books, find a good title whose rights were still pending, start to translate it and send it to the publishing houses, hoping they would accept it.

That option sounded like quite good, but wasn’t perfect, at least to my eyes. Best sellers authors have already their translators and the risk is to simply spend hours translating something that nobody will read.

So, I  said to myself, why don’t you contact good Authors direclty, who could be interesting for the Italian audience, and talk to them? And I’m telling you, it works and I think this can at least reduce the risk that the publishing house will give the translation to some other professional. More.