Another ta-da! of good news today. I woke up to an exciting email from my publisher at Joffe Books, forwarding an email from their sub-agent who specializes in audiobook and foreign language rights (remember: the one who sold the audiobook rights to The Love of My Other Life?) Well, this agent, Lorella Belli, had been quietly working behind the scenes with not one but two Czech publishers, who entered into an auction for the Czech language rights to my book.
So my novel is going to be translated and published in Czech! How amazing and cool is that?!
Since we had a choice of two offers, we’ve gone with the bigger publisher that came up to a better best-and-final offer, in terms of both royalties and advance, so it was an easy choice. (Sorry, smaller Czech publishing house!)
What’s more, they’re going to publish not only an e-book and a paperback, but also a hardback, including a “book club edition” – which I understand is generally smaller and cheaper than a hardback but fancier than a standard paperback. So it’ll be really cool to see the physical book in different edition types than just the R5-sized paperback of the English language version.
No news yet on:
a) When all this will happen – there will be some contractual back and forth first. Indeed, I’m still waiting to sign the audiobook contract that was agreed on six weeks ago! And then of course there has to be the translation process, and then presumably rounds of copy-editing, etc. So it could be a while! (Book publishing is sloooooow.)
b) Whether the cover will be the same – presumably not the title, but I mean the cover art. If yes, they’d have to fit the title “Láska Mého Druhého Života” (that’s via Google Translate, so it may not be accurate!) into a space designed for shorter words, but no doubt their graphic team would be up for the challenge. Or maybe it’s a different cover entirely, for the different market. Oooooh.
Either way, I’m just so happy that The Love of My Other Life is still getting traction and interest, and from such unexpected places! I find it totally wild that people in a Czech publishing firm in the middle of Prague have been reading my book, enjoying it, discussing it, and deciding to take it on – enough to translate it, publish it, distribute it, and market it to Czech readers. That’s mind-blowing to me! Like I said last time, it’s taken on a life of its own, and that’s what I had always hoped for.
CJ Connolly 