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Northern European publishers don’t just want translations of UK books; they want their own English-language editions.
For decades the Netherlands has been the most important non-English-speaking market for English-language books. As early as the 1990s, when I first started working in Dutch publishing, whenever authors visited from the UK, Ireland or North America, we’d see the same thing happen: their Dutch publisher would invite them, invest a lot of time and money in the visit, only for dozens and sometimes hundreds of English-language import editions to be sold at a reading or signing session versus just a handful in Dutch translation. Even then, and certainly now, this was a serious problem for Dutch publishers, though they have continued publishing translations and inviting authors, in part because the Netherlands was always an active market where translations were often published first and could bring in money. In that sense, the Netherlands was and is the "gateway to Europe".
However, in recent years there has been a fundamental shift: whereas in the 1980s and 1990s the phenomenon concerned mainly literary fiction, with the increase in the level of English-language education in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany, reading books in English has spread to all categories. Now, commercial fiction and nonfiction, cookbooks, young adult and romance are all being bought in English. And whereas for a long time the sale of English-language editions in the Netherlands only took place in bookshops, there is probably not a single book-reading Dutch person without an Amazon account today – though Amazon unfortunately doesn’t publish those numbers. Last year, one in five of the books sold in Dutch bookshops was in English, and this didn’t include sales on, for example, Amazon and other retailers, making the true number substantially higher.
Research by the EF English Proficiency Index shows that year on year, out of the countries where English is not the first language, the Dutch speak it the best: 95% of Dutch people can hold a nuanced conversation, negotiate a contract, read a book in English and watch English-language films or television without subtitles. Scandinavia follows closely behind (Denmark ranks fourth, Norway fifth and Sweden sixth). Recently, however, Germany has been following the same trend (although ranked 10th in the Index), a fact that UK and US publishers are also waking up to.
Northern European readers are reading more and more in English and that this is a trend that won’t be reversed. We’d better all plan accordingly
Particularly at big five publishers, sales departments are rightly thinking: sales, sales, sales. Foreign rights departments are nevertheless seeing their number of deals in Northern Europe fall sharply (our agency too, of course); the benefit of publishing an expensive translation is shrinking (to say nothing here of the discussion surrounding translation using AI tools), especially when UK or US publishers obstruct publication in the Netherlands or Scandinavia several weeks before the release of the English-language edition for fear of losing revenue in those countries.
For a long time, this was the only way to generate any sales at all, but two years ago we came up with another option. We now offer Dutch, Scandinavian and German publishers not only the right to publish a book in translation, but also the right to publish their own English-language edition, with their own design, geared towards their home market, and at their own price (many of the countries we work in have fixed book prices that apply to translations but not import editions, meaning the latter are often considerably cheaper given English-language publishers’ economies of scale).
UK and US publishers have been slow to cooperate, unlike many literary agents from those same countries. These agencies have not only seen their number of deals and the number of copies sold increase, they now also earn royalties on home sales rather than on an export edition, which can sometimes mean a revenue hike of fifty per cent.
So we’ve entered a new phase – a phase we should accept and embrace. It’s a fact that Northern European readers are reading more and more in English and that this is a trend that won’t be reversed. We’d better all plan accordingly, and it’s certainly something UK and US sales and rights departments should prepare for, too.