For many books, especially books with a lot of text, like trade paperbacks, Licensing the book is usually the best approach. A deal is struck with the publisher and copyright holder to buy the “rights” for the book—that is, the right to translate and publish it in your language and country.
Usually, the Publisher will give you a licence to publish and sell in your language and territory for a limited period in exchange for a payment—usually an “advance” (an upfront non-returnable payment against the likely royalties that the book will generate) and a royalty on sales.
But with children’s colour books, where there is usually much less text and the cost of printing is much higher, a new method of production has been developed.
On a standard Litho printing press, the colour pictures are made up of four process colours – Black, Cyan (blue), Magenta and Yellow. For co-editions, all the text printed in Black, is moved to another fifth plate. This means that a publisher printing, say, 5,000 copies of a book in English, can halt the press after their books are printed and change a single black plate to another language — German, French or Spanish, for example — and then print a further 1,000 books in that language, before changing the plate again to another language.
Often co-editions will be printed with as many as a dozen languages at the same time. This means that the cost of setting up the press to print colour is spread across all the different editions and becomes much cheaper for everyone concerned.
Almost all of our children's books are available to be published as co-editions.
There are additional savings to be made when the book in question is a board book, lift-the-flap book or has other special features. Setting up a binding line for these is a significant initial cost, and so binding books like this is exceptionally expensive for a short run.
For example, look at this cost comparison between the two approaches based on some real figures we investigated for a print run of 1,000 copies.
| Rights Sale | Co-edition | |
|---|---|---|
| Contract costs | £300.00 | £300.00 |
| Advance | £700.00 | £1080.00 |
| Translation cost | £500.00 | £500.00 |
| Print 1000 copies | £2850.00 | £1150.00 |
| Shipping | £280.00 | £520.00 |
| Estimated royalties | £380.00 | £0.00 |
| Total | £5010.00 | £3550.00 |
| Cost per book | £5.01 | £3.55 |
| Profit margin | 50% | 65% |
Once language partners decide to publish, they fill out a Purchase Order with The Good Book Company, which is then attached to a Contract. The contract will specify the timings and the payment schedule. Upon payment of the advance fee, TGBC will supply layered InDesign files for the partner to use for laying out the translated text.
The partner translates the text, adapting it to local needs, places it in position using InDesign files supplied by us, then produces and sends to us pdfs of the black language text only.
The partner then has plotter proofs from the printer, as position check guides, so that they can sign-off their edition.
All language partners share a common format, design and illustration package but have the book in their own language, translated, adapted, checked and controlled by them. Partners also have the option to design their own cover.
Each publishing partner buys exclusive publishing rights for their agreed market area when they contract to buy a book from The Good Book Company.
All royalties are covered in the inclusive price paid for the printed books. The only extra cost is shipping the books to your warehouse or distribution centre. We can organise this, or you can handle it yourself through your own shipping agent. Full details of TGBC terms and conditions — and the process for producing suitable text pdfs — are available on request.
