I’ve been holding onto this information for weeks! I sold Greek translation rights for BORROWING ALEX to Anubis Publications in Athens for publication in mass market paperback and ebook for distribution in Greece and Cyprus. As you can tell, I’m super excited that BORROWING ALEX has found its first foreign market.
Essentially, this will be the first time one of my books will be published in mass market format rather than the larger and more expensive trade paperback format. The print run for the comic book edition of HEAD OVER HEELS was larger than the Greek print run for BORROWING ALEX, and comic books are a form of mass market, but the Greek edition of BORROWING ALEX will be the first time one of my books will appear in narrative form in mass market—just in another language.
What makes it more fun is that a friend of mine also sold one of her books to Anubis. I’ll let her out herself, if she happens to read this blog post. We didn’t find out until a week or so ago that we had both been approached.
Everything has happened so fast since I was contacted by the publisher a month or so ago. Oh, it might have been January. I had several hoops to jump through to prove to the Greek authorities that I am a Canadian citizen for tax purposes for 2012, so I won’t be double-taxed. Every sale to a different country comes with its own learning curve, and the Greek sale was no exception. Unlike when I sold HEAD OVER HEELS to Japan and only needed to fill out a form and basically certify myself, for Greece I had to get Revenue Canada to write a letter on official letterhead stating that I am a Canadian resident for tax purposes, and I also had to get a Revenue Canada representative to fill out and sign a Hellenic tax form. Turns out you can do this all through the mail, but I had no idea how long it would take to accomplish. I received the letter from Revenue Canada quicker than anticipated, and yesterday I sent off all the paperwork for tax purposes to the manager of Anubis Publications.
Like with the Japanese sale of HEAD OVER HEELS, the sale of BORROWING ALEX came out of the blue, as a result of Anubis first approaching Amber Quill Press, which published the first edition of BORROWING ALEX. So if anyone has questions about how to go about finding foreign markets for books for which you hold those rights, alas, I don’t have the answers. I would like to get my books into more foreign markets, so this is something I will have to investigate sooner or later.
For now, I’m thrilled that the Greek translation has been accomplished, and apparently I should be receiving my author copies soon. When I do, I’ll post the cover.
