Okay, the above is a really bad pun on the name for the Korean alphabet. But seriously, friends… my debut novel, The Love of My Other Life, is going to be translated into Korean and published and sold in Korea! Isn’t that wild? I can’t believe my luck.
I got the news just this morning and I’m so thrilled. My publisher Kate at Joffe Books emailed me to say that their sub-agent, Lorella Belli Literary Agency (LBLA, which has also sold Czech and Slovak rights, plus the audiobook) had landed the deal with a Korean publisher.
The foreign rights agent at LBLA said that the Korean market “is small and incredibly selective, especially with women’s fiction/romance. Not many authors can say they’re published there!” So it’s a real honour that this publisher chose to take a chance on my contemporary romance novel.
The publisher is Moonhak Soochup Publishing, which also publishes lots of big-name books in Korean, including J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Dan Brown’s global bestsellers including The Da Vinci Code, and James Dashner’s Maze Runner series. I recently read Lucky by Marissa Stapley, and loved it, and she’s just sold Korean rights to that novel to Moonhak Soochup as well. So, ahem, you could say I’m in pretty great company.
Like the Czech and Slovak publishers we’ve sold rights to, it’s a very different publishing and distribution model than the way it works for my regular English-language version. In this case, as I’m a newbie, Moonhak Soochup is doing a limited print run of 1,500 physical copies (I’m assuming in paperback) to start with, to see how well they sell. I don’t know how many stores they will be sold in, but this number sounds about right to me, as that would be 10 copies for each of 150 stores, for example, or five copies in 300 stores. Then if it sells out, they’ll print more.
The fact that it’s going to be translated into Korean at all, and sold in Korean bookstores, is totally amazing to me. I feel so incredibly honoured that anybody would think it is worth all that effort! And of course, I absolutely can’t WAIT to see what the Korean version looks like. I’ve no idea whether the translation of the title will be literal or whether a new title will need to be created to make more sense in Korean – that’s up to the publisher. I won’t be able to understand a word of it anyway! But I’m certain it will look absolutely beautiful in Korean. Check out this screengrab from the Moonhak Soochup website – aren’t these covers gorgeous?
I’ll keep you all updated on this and the other foreign language versions of my books!
Eeeeeeek. 😀
CJ Connolly 