Published: December 25, 2009
ROCHESTER — The publishing industry is in a tailspin; translated works account for, at best, 3 percent of the American book market; and budgets for higher education are shrinking. But none of this seems to deter Open Letter Books, a small, year-old press here affiliated with the University of Rochester that publishes nothing but literature in translation.
Chad W. Post, the director of Open Letter Books, an affiliate of the University of Rochester that has published 16 titles so far.
“There’s a set of readers out there that’s very interested in translations and international literature and is not getting what it wants,” said Chad W. Post, Open Letter’s director. “So we believe our business model can work. American literature has a lot of great works. But English-speaking readers don’t have full access to voices and viewpoints from around the world, and we’re trying to rectify that.”
Though none of Open Letter’s 16 titles has yet sold more than 3,000 copies, its efforts have quickly attracted attention and critical praise. Open Letter books, including the recently published “Season of Ash,” by the Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi, have appeared on Best of 2009 lists; and Amazon.com, which has begun an effort to bring more international writers to the attention of American readers, recently awarded Open Letter a $20,000 grant to support publication of “The Wall in My Head,” an anthology by East European writers about the collapse of Communism there.
The world of American publishers specializing in translation is small, and each house has adopted a slightly different strategy to stay afloat. Archipelago Books has gone the nonprofit route and solicits tax-deductible contributions; Europa Editions is the extension of an Italian house and publishes only trade paperbacks; and the Dalkey Archive Press, where Mr. Post, 34, worked until coming here, is both a nonprofit entity and, like Open Letter, tied to an academic institution, the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
“If you’re publishing authors whose names aren’t known, you have to give readers a reason to pick up a book and to get excited about your press,” Martin Riker, associate director of Dalkey, said. “There’s a branding going on, and Chad is definitely trying that.”
Open Letter published its first title, a collection of essays by the Croatian novelist Dubravka Ugresic called “Nobody’s Home,” in September 2008, just as the economic crisis was erupting. But more than a year earlier, to herald the book’s arrival and attract potential readers, Open Letter had begun a blog called Three Percent (rochester.edu/threepercent), a mordant reference to the literary ghetto to which translation is consigned
Though it might have initially been conceived as a marketing device, Three Percent has turned into a lively clearing house for everything related to literature in translation, and logs more than two million page views a year, with obvious commercial benefits for Open Letter. Readers can post their own reviews and learn what foreign publishing houses are up to, and translators can discuss their craft and check to see which works are available and which have already been snatched up by colleagues.
“It’s very difficult in the present economic climate for a publishing house to be totally dependent on university funding, and in the press, editors have less space for reviews and translations,” said Peter Bush, vice president of the International Federation of Translators, who is translating a collection of short stories from Catalan for Open Letter. “But there are readers out there communicating with each other about translation, and through Three Percent, Open Letter is plugged into the new media and is using that space to find new readers and sell their books.”
A seven-member selection committee that includes University of Rochester faculty chooses the titles Open Letter publishes. While members of that group say they would not be averse to picking a book that could become a best seller — the Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of crime novels having shown once again that American readers will embrace certain books not written in English — they say that is not their principal goal.
“We want the openness in the name Open Letter to register,” said Joanna Scott, a professor of English here who is the author of nine novels. “What we are looking for is excellent work, from any language, eclectic modern fiction that is overlooked. Commerce does not enter the discussions; I wouldn’t know a commercial book if I saw one.”
To increase Open Letter’s reach, Mr. Post talks about finding ways to tap into specialized audiences, like the people who go to movie theaters known for showing foreign films. One thing he has already done is to ensure that all of Open Letter’s books have the same distinctively lean, uncluttered design, almost as if he were running a specialty jazz label like Blue Note or Impulse!, which built a loyal cadre of customers through a combination of a signature look and sound.
“They’ve been really smart in creating immensely eye-catching books that readers are going to pick up when they see them in a store window or on a friend’s bookshelf, just because they are so interesting-looking,” said Paul Yamazaki, lead buyer at City Lights in San Francisco. “Their books really stand out. They’re creating a house identity with visual cues, and with all the choices that readers have these days, that helps, especially when most of what you’re doing is introducing writers new to Americans.”