Co-edition publishing is an internationally recognised way of publishing colour books in different languages in a cost-effective way. It enables publishers in languages that only support a small print run (from 1000 copies upwards) to translate a book into their language and produce it at a cost that makes it commercially viable in their home market, by joining a much larger print run which includes many other publishers.
Below we give an explanation of how this works.
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 up-front non-returnable payment against the likely royalties that the book will generate) and a royalty on sales.
But with 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.
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.
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.
To book a meeting with the Good Book Company Rights Team to discuss this, please click here.
