Dick wrote:
>Kevin's comment about the lack of US publisher
interest in UK doesn't quite
>gibe with my observation. Ignoring the obvious US
"imports," from Harry
>Potter to Ian Rankin, I think both St. Martin's and
Walker publish more
>British crime titles than American titles. Scribner
publishes, last time I
>looked, a healthy lineup of British titles from folks
like Barnard and
>Brett. Same with Mysterious Press. Certainly, if any
book makes money in
>England (McDermid, Robinson et al), it winds up at an
American publisher. If
>the point was that some very good noir titles are
overlooked, I wouldn't
>argue against that one. But it probably means they
weren't of noticeable
>"financial" success at home.
Well, I guess I should have specified hard-boiled fiction
(always a niche market), but I'm happy to be proven wrong if
that means there'll be more HB fiction from the U.K.
available in affordable mass market editions, instead of
pricey yuppiebacks, on this side of the pond. As I said
before, I hadn't really been to a decent-sized American
bookstore in a while, and I should have made it more clear
that I was thinking more along the lines of writers like Ken
Bruen, Mark Timlin, Irvine Welsh and the like. And sometimes
it's not even British authors. I bought several of George's
early books as British editions, because, as far as I could
tell, there just weren't any U.S. editions available.
And Anthony chimed in with:
>Come on guys, let's be fair ... it takes a while to
get them translated
>before they can be published. ;)
And all the big words taken out?
But seriously, do they still do that? Sometimes I think they
don't edit books at all. But do they really still go through
an entire book changing tyre to tire, colour to color and
boot to trunk, just so American readers don't get confused.
Or the other way around? I remember somehow receiving an 87th
book translated (beaten, more like it) into "English" several
years ago, and it was just completely awkward and silly. Do
publishers really take all of us for such isolationist morons
that we can't figure it out? Or are they just aiming for the
lowest of the lowest common denominator?
I think I'd rather have a glossary or even friggin' footnotes
included, rather than plow through another botched
trans-Atlantic cultural translation.
But how many people are there in New Jersey?
Kevin http://www.thrillingdetective.com
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