← The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Self-Publishing in German: How to Translate, Distribute, and Market Your Books with Skye MacKinnon
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Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show hello creatives, I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode 861 of the podcast and it is Sunday 3rd May 2026. As I record this in today's show, I'm Talking to Sky MacKinnon about German translations. We talk about how the German market is different to the English speaking markets and why it might be worth looking into translation for some authors as well as what are the best ways to translate, self publish and market your books in German English, including thoughts on human translation as well as tips for using AI as part of your process. So that's coming up in the interview section in Writing and Publishing. Well, I sent out a question in my email newsletter this week. What unexpected turn has your creative path taken? And I've had so many interesting replies to this. One particular reply made me want to share as I understand the feeling One author said that she feels like she may never write another book because she is just completely empty from the last one. It took everything to write and she feels an exhaustion at the thought of all the publishing and marketing tasks and it all just seems too much. She is truly creatively empty and also not interested in the business side. So I thought I would talk about this a little bit and mention them separately. So there's creativity and business. So on the creativity side the feeling of being empty creatively is just it's not unusual for me it always happens at the end of a fiction project in particular or also with memoir. I haven't really had it with nonfiction, the sort of self help nonfiction, because it feels like that is a different kind of writing, but certainly emptying out all my ideas, all my creativity, everything is in the book and I am done. And there are several times over the last 20 years when I've thought I will never write another story, I'll never write another novel. That is it, I have nothing left but that is as it should be. Don't hold anything back, give everything to the book and then rest. And here the gardening example is apartment As I did a big gardening session this week planting and bringing out the pots and what I found in the pots that had flowers and plants in last season is some of them were okay, but some of them had soil that was just dead. It was practically ash. It was. There were no nutrients left. It was all used up in the last lot of flowers and growing season. But that's okay because I tipped it out and I used new compost and lovely nutrient dense soil. And the flowers will bloom again this spring and summer and so will you. Sometimes you need to repot yourself whatever you take that metaphor to mean. Sometimes you need new soil or some watering or some care and feeding and time and rest. Maybe some fallow seasons where you rest and let nature take its course. And that creative spark will light once more because we are just naturally creative. That's what we are as humans. So I didn't actually feel like that after Bones of the Deep. I am starting to feel that around this master's degree, which is quite interesting. I can tell you now I'm not doing a PhD. No, thank you. But I really enjoyed the Masters. But I'm very much looking forward to 100% focus on my author business again. But I did start working on a new project this week as well. Creative project. Not at all on my plan for the year, but as I have learned, my plans often are just laid by the wayside quite quickly. But it has sparked something for me and I had a moment this week where I felt like this is the most important thing I can be working on creatively. It really is. So the working title is Reborn. And that's all I'm going to say for now. Most of my working titles don't carry through and this is another standalone. I love it. I'm so excited. All over again. And that spark has sparked for me. And what's funny, of course, is as this goes out, the Bones of the Deep Kickstarter ends today. And I do think there's something for me in closing a loop. I mean, yes, I have to fulfill it, but the book is completely done. The audiobook's done, Everything's done for that book. It is. The loop is closed in my head. Some of you will read it and then the loop will be open over there. But for me, that book is done. And so the creative Spark is available again. And so yes, Reborn has got me working. And then just coming back to that question, on the business side of things, there are two answers. So one, and you know, I've been talking about this for a while now, which is you don't need your writing to be a business. It does not have to be. In fact, if you just write for the joy of creating, creating things in the world, it is a worthy adventure in itself. And then you can just remove all the marketing tasks, remove all the stress of like oh how many books have I sold? Or how do I reach readers? And you can just have fun writing. But of course if you do want to sort out the marketing and the business side of things, then I have found that the key is repeatable systems that work for you and your books and your lifestyle. So for me that is using podcasting and email marketing long form content basically instead of TikTok writing writing to market tons of paid ads. And also I have multiple streams of income which takes the pressure off book sales which you can dial up and down as you need to. So I just wanted to comment on that because I know how it feels and when I saw my pots of dry soil, I mean they weren't even soil anymore. I mean they would dust. You feel creatively dry. You think nothing will ever grow there again. But you just need to refresh your soil, fill your creative well and the flowers will certainly bloom again. Then into marketing things and talking about longer form content it is interesting how many people are moving to Substack and there were two podcast episodes about it this week that you might consider listening to if you are interested in using it. First of all, Orna Ross on Stark Reflections with Marc Lefebvre. So Orna is the founder of the alliance of Independent Authors and a good friend of mine. Mark is a good friend too. Both are experienced, extremely experienced authors with decades of writing and publishing and selling books. Orna writes literary fiction, mainly historical and poetry. Mark writes short stories in horror and a lot of non fiction books about places in Canada. So you might know them in the publishing sphere, but they have a lot of craft as well. And on Substack's creative benefits they talk about that. It simplifies the creative process, allowing for a sharper focus on writing. Substack consolidates things like a blog, a newsletter, social media, and even membership services like Patreon into a single platform. So writers don't need to manage lots and lots of technical bits and pieces and actually spend more time creating content, reducing administrative and technical maintenance, which is great for everyone. Substack provides a nurturing and highly inspiring environment. Unlike traditional social media platforms, which often prioritize algorithms and are increasingly difficult to gain traction on, Substack integrates naturally with the creative process. I know Orna likes the book Nerd Heaven, filled with high quality discussions about books and writing, providing writers with input and inspiration, acting as an escape from the slop and endless scrolling found on other sites. I would add here that I don't think it matters which site you engage with, but you have to engage there. I mean, there's no point putting loads of stuff out on Substack if you don't engage in the discussions, read other people's newsletters, that kind of thing. So I do think as with every other platform, your engagement and other people's engagement is related. Also, they discuss publishing directly to subscribers, such as Serializing a novel allows writers to receive immediate feedback. Knowing that real people are actively waiting for the next instalment, concentrates the mind and makes showing up to write a joyful experience. Also, giving a regular publishing cadence, which can help writers stick to a healthy routine. There are also flexible avenues for diverse creative expression. You can use tagging and segmentation so you can write across different things like serialized fiction, poetry and non fiction reflections, which is what Orna does. But does Substack sell books? Well, not specifically, as in it doesn't have a native bookstore for directly selling books. Instead, authors use Substack to drive traffic to their external shops by linking out to them. Orna adds by the book links at the end of her posts and notes that authors must manually build these pathways for their readers. So it does also allow monetization through paid subscriptions. But I know this, and many of you will know this. The percentage of people who are on my Patreon, for example, is a tiny percentage of my overall audience. So don't expect if you have 100 readers on Substack, you're not going to get 100 subscribers. So you can listen to that entire interview on Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing wherever you're listening to this. Also on Substack over on the Wish I'd Known Then podcast, Jolie Tunnell talks about using Substack to serialize mysteries and build reader community. So this is more specifically about revenue from fiction and talks. Unlike traditional publishing platforms, Substack allows easy embedding of pictures, graphics and illustrations, and Tunnel enhances her chapters with visual clues, treasure maps and character cards. You can also use video. You can schedule regular chapter drops and this slow reading approach creates an ongoing appointment like experience that readers look forward to. I mean I can comment on that as obviously this goes out on Monday 7.30am UK time and if I miss the time slot because often only time I've ever missed it. But we were on holiday and it didn't post and that's sometimes what happened. So yes, sometimes things don't post, but having this kind of regular habit to listen or read to something can make a real difference. They also talk about offering interactive bonus content and membership drives, secondary newsletters, puzzles, colouring pages, audiobook vouchers, and try and encourage subscriptions. And then remember that Substack allows creators to export their entire subscriber list and archive of posts at any time. And I would suggest that you definitely do that regularly because these platforms change. They can shut you out, they can shut down your account. Everything changes. Remember, these things often do not last forever. And I was thinking about why Substack is coming up so much right now. I think it really reflects the fatigue with social media and the pendulum perhaps swinging back to long form content for some people. So back in 2005, the blogging game before social media, writing long form content was what pretty much everyone did in terms of gaining an audience. Then social media started taking commenting away from blogs and now it feels like perhaps the pendulum is swinging back again. I've always preferred long form content and I listen to a few podcasts a week, the same ones usually, And I appreciate all of you list as you clearly do the same instead of scrolling through short videos on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. I know some of you do both, but it's like what? It's what time you spend engaging in other people's content and what you do with that time and what you enjoy doing. I'm not criticizing how you spend your time or anyone does, it's your choice. But it's interesting that Substack is on the rise and the important thing to remember though is it's not a magic bullet to sell more books. Nothing is. It is more about building a creative hub where you express yourself and over a long time you can attract people who might be interested in what you do. Like this podcast I guess, which I started in 2009 and still going strong after all these years. So in personal things, as I mentioned, as this goes out, my Kickstarter for Bones of the Deep is is just about finished. It finishes on the Monday this goes out. So thanks to all backers. Please check your email for the survey and updates coming soon that we move into fulfillment, which is the fun bit and I'm looking forward to you reading it. And if you miss the Kickstarter then Bones of the Deep will be on my store in July and most likely out everywhere else by end of August September time. So as ever Kickstarters and buying direct goes first and then it goes out everywhere else. So I've also been working on the AI webinars which I'm really excited about. So much has changed since I did them in September. And in fact on the topic of today's show, one of the things that has changed is the ability to do translation workflows with multiple QA steps circling through the manuscript multiple times, different beta reader views and a context window big enough for the whole series, let alone a whole book. So that is pretty exciting. I'll be sharing my workflow in the advanced webinar because it is advanced, I use Claude code for it. I am doing two webinars, firstly the AI Assisted Artisan Author that will cover everything you need pretty much for most author publishers. So if you're early in your AI journey, come along to that. That will be full of useful prompts that you can use in your creative and author business and your marketing. Even if you came last year, last September, things have changed so much it will still be useful. If you did come to an earlier webinar or you're a patron, you will have received a discount code. So make sure you use that. I should emphasize I do not teach book generation. I do teach AI Assist is why it is the AI assisted Artisan author as that is what I do. So the advanced session which is the following week. So the the first one is Saturday 16th of May and the second one is Saturday 23rd of May. They are completely different sessions. The advanced one is looking at business process redesign based on AI building skills, Claude code Claude cowork for agentic AI with the intent of doing these much more sort of integrated scenarios and ye I mean it's going to be super super interesting. So if either of those sound interesting, you can find the links@the creativepen.com live thecreativepenn.com live and patrons and those who attended my previous webinars, please check your email. So thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. Thorn says. What a terrific conversation. Adam Leipzig is such a thoughtful human. I enjoyed listening to you both. Yes, I agree it is actually really funny because obviously I haven' met a lot of the guests who come on the show before they come on the show. Although I have met some people, Thorne being an example who's been on the show. But I did definitely feel that with Adam. I connect more with some people than others and I really did also feel a connection with him. So yeah, lovely to talk to creative people. CJ Edmonds also sent a photo on X time for my end of the day walk listening to the show. A beautiful Manila sunset over there. Thanks CJ and Charlie sent a photo of the grave site of Chief Shakes, the Native American chief of the Tlingit tribe in Wrangell, Alaska with There's a white fence and green trees and Charlie says I live on my sailboat based out of Wrangell. I bet I've said that wrong. Wrangell and cruise the wilds of Alaska every summer. I've published three books so far on Amazon about my adventures and enjoy every one of your weekly editions of Help and your books have helped me hone my skills of writing, publishing and promotion. Thank you Charlie. And Cruising the wilds of Alaska every summer. Sounds wonderful and one of the places in the world I have not been. Perhaps one day okay, so please leave a comment on the podcast show notes@thecreativepenn.com or on the YouTube channel. You can message me on X at the Creative Pen. You can email me, send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or churchyard. Joanna at@the creative pen.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. And remember, that is my email. And if you get an email claiming to be from me asking you for money, that is not me. Sure if you sign up for my webinar you have to pay, but I will not be emailing you saying please pay to come on the podcast, which seems to be the current spam scam thing that is going around with my name and other people's names. That is not me. So be careful out there. Today's show is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which helps you with keyword and category research on Amazon which you need for your metadata when self publishing, as well as generating lists of keywords for your Amazon ads. You can do this on Amazon, but it takes a lot more time and you have to think of all the different permutations to search for. You can also ask ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, but they don't have all the data that Rocket does. And I've found that Publisher Rocket saves me so much time and frustration that I use it for every book in every genre I publish. It makes the process easy, which, let's face it, is what we all need so we can get back to writing. You can use it to find keywords that readers actually type into Amazon Search. You can also learn about other authors sales with the Competitor analysis which I use to find categories I want my book to appear in. You can also use the reverse ASIN feature to see what keywords other books are benefiting from. And the ASIN is the number that Amazon assigns to things like Kindle Books. This makes keyword research easier than it's ever been. Plus you can discover best selling book categories and niche categories which you can use to write to market if that's your thing. Or you can find profitable keywords for Amazon ads and easily export them. Importantly for today's show you can search separately across different Amazon stores for us, uk, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, France, Spain as well as ebooks, audiobooks or print and in different languages. English, German, French, Italian, Italian and Spanish. Very useful for the translations that many indies are now doing. It is a one time payment and you get 30 days money back guarantee. You can start researching for keywords categories and competition right away. Publisher Rocket is one of my must use tools as part of my publishing process and it is very reasonably priced. Go check it out@publisherrocket.com that's publisherrocket.com so this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com thecreativepenn thanks to the 17 new patrons who've joined this week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community you get access to all my backlist videos and audio on writing, craft, author, business and AI tutorials. Last week I shared prompt examples for how to make excellent infographics for your non fiction book. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePen Right, let's get into the interview. Sky McKinnon is the award winning USA Today best selling author of over 70 books across romance and children's books under multiple pen names, most of which are also available in German which is her best selling market. Her latest book for authors is Self Publishing in How to Translate, publish and market your books. So welcome. Skye hi.
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B
Thank you so much for having me.
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A
Oh no, this is such an interesting topic but first up tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.
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B
Well I've always loved writing but I was always told well you can't be an author, get a proper job. So I became a journalist and did that for a few years. But there was always that love of creative writing. So at some point when I Was getting more active on social media. I was following some other indie authors and realized, realized they're just like me. They're not like special people. Because I had always pictured authors as these mythical beings high up above the rest of us. And that gave me the courage to put out my own book. I self published from the start. Never even looked into trad publishing and that was in 2017 and I was really lucky. My first series totally hit it off. I was able to quit my job a year later and I have been a full time author ever since. I started with romance and then by accident got into children's books, which has been great fun. I don't even have children myself, but it's just that palette cleanser in between of writing about cute animals and unicorns and just yeah, bringing some fun into everything. And yeah, nowadays I have I think about five or six pen names depending how you count across genres. Although most of it is romance. And that's my bread and butter really.
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A
Yes, I'm certainly one of those people who wish I could write romance. I mean it always just seems to be the most profitable market in any language, I guess. But let's get into the book. It's a fantastic book. I've been through it myself. It's really, really packed full of everything you need. So we can't cover everything. But let's start by considering the German language in general. Why is German a good language market to consider expanding into? And for anyone who might not realize, why is it more than Germany?
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B
Well, Germans love to read and depending on the statistic that you look at, they're generally seen as the third largest book market in the world after English and Mandarin Chinese. So it's a huge market. Even though you think of Germany as like a small little country in Europe. But as you said, it's much more than Germany. Yes, You've got about 83 million people in Germany, but then you've also got Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, parts of Belgium, Luxembourg and even Italy. So if you look at the whole footprint on the map, it is much bigger than just the one country. Germans. A lot of young people there still read and go to bookshops. There's a huge bookshop culture you will find if you go to a high street there are way more bookshops than you do here in the uk for example. There's a demand for quality and for really gorgeous books. They have been way ahead of the curve when it comes to special editions and sprayed edges and. And they also like translations. I found one statistics where it's about 2/3 of all new released titles in German. Actual translations, readers, they are used to translations, but until a few years ago it was all tried published translations. So this transition is coming now. It's coming very, very fast, especially with AI. But yeah, they generally are very open to translations as long as the quality is there.
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A
Yeah. So what about specific genres then? I mean, obviously we mentioned romance. Romance is not just one genre anymore. But if people, whatever they're writing, how can somebody tell if it's worth expanding into German? As however we do this, it takes time and effort and money. Potentially.
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B
Yes. Yeah, it can take a lot of money. So it is worth doing a research. There's one easy way is just looking at your current sales and looking at how many books are you selling in Germany, Austria, Switzerland at the moment in English and then that can give you an indication which of your books might be already quite popular there. And sometimes it's quite surprising. A lot of my books sell very differently in German than they do from the English version. So I've got one series that did okay in English and I almost didn't translate it. And the Germans is, I think it's my second best selling series in German and has completely surprised me. So sometimes it's worth just experimenting. But otherwise, obviously, as you said, romance is doing really well. But there's a few surprises. Like I had a chat with Drafted Digital and they gave me lots of information from their statistics and they said that Westerns like 40% of all the western title sales on Draft Digital actually in Germany, which is just a huge percentage in English across languages. And so Germans, to be fair, they love their Westerns. My dad in Germany, he has been watching these, yeah, Westerns ever I don't know how many, for how many decades. And it is one of those things that is just really popular there. Another thing is anything that is set in other countries and really has the location as almost like a character. So there's lots of Cornwall, Scotland, different islands, but also mountains and cities. So if your book is set in even in New York City, if you have it, if it has a clear setting, if it's not just if it could be any city, then then that's not as important or not as good. But if it has a clear flavor of that city in your book, then that's also a good one to think about translating. But in general, most genres can do well. There's a few where you have to be a bit careful. So Second World War books, for example, if you have a book that portrays every single German as a Nazi and as evil, it might not do as well in Germany. So some common sense when it comes to historical books, but otherwise, just look at German retailers, look at what is selling there. And not just Amazon, but places like Talia, which is part of the Tolino alliance and they have about 40% of the market. So it's really important to look at them too, and not just at Amazon.
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A
Yeah, we'll come back to the distribution in a minute. There are some important differences between the German market and the US UK market in terms of, obviously that we're talking about a different language, but there are a few things that are different and some people might not think about. So give us a few of those things that people definitely need to think about.
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B
Okay. So even before you start publishing, you need to be aware that title protection is a thing in Germany. So your book can't have the same title as an already published book. That is a law that is basically there to avoid readers being confused. So if you had like five books with the same title, then readers might not realize which book is by which author. And yeah, so you have to do your research and check if anyone else is using your title. Now, there's some exceptions where if it's a completely different genre. So if there's a children's book with that title but you write spicy romance, then of course the chances that the reader gets confused are much lower. So quite often you can then contact either the author or the publisher and ask, can I get written permission to use that title? And I did that for one of my series and it was totally fine. Just be sure to get it in writing because if your book suddenly becomes a huge bestseller, they might reconsider. So title protection is an important one. You need to research that before you publish. Now, one thing that people sometimes get confused with is reusing the English title. That's totally fine because it's your own title. So if your English title hasn't been used and you want to keep that same title, that works. It's just about other people's books where you can't use those titles. Another important legal bit is the impressum. It's their copyright page and all books, and to be fair, websites that are targeting German readers or a German audience have to have that impressum. It's usually on page two of the book and it has things like your legal name, your address, and then the usual thing like translator's name, cover design, other things you would usually put on a. A copyright page. But the problem Is that technically you need to put your legal name in there, unless you have a limited company, then you can also put the business name there and your address. So a lot of people obviously don't want to do that for privacy reasons. Especially like romance authors where it's sometimes a bit sketchy when it comes to some readers who get a bit too obsessed. There are services where you can pay a monthly or yearly fee and then use their address. It's a bit of a legal gray zone, but a lot of German authors are doing it because. Yeah, especially as indie authors, we don't always want to put our legal address out there.
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A
I use just for people, I use my accountants.
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B
Yes.
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A
And that's quite common. I mean you have to share your address on your email for anti spam laws and all that kind of thing. So.
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B
Exactly.
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A
But yeah, as you say, there are ways to use other addresses. But yeah, that just needs to happen. Yeah.
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B
What.
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A
What else then do we need to think about? About?
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B
There are things about the translator. So a lot of things that where people are sometimes scared a bit is when they hear that there's a copyright issue with translators and they think, oh, my translator has the copyright, I can't do anything. But actually the translator is seen as an author, so almost like a co author of the translation in German law. Because to be fair, it's not just putting one word into another. Translation is quite a creative job, especially when it's fiction. Obviously it's different for non fiction, but for fiction it is a very creative job where the translator has to a lot of their own creativity into it. So in German law they're recognized as the creator of that translation and therefore have certain rights. But you as the author, as soon as you have a contract with your translator, which is why you always, always, always have to have a contract, you get the usage rights. Which then means it's exactly the same as with your English books. You can do with them what you want. You can get audiobooks, you can do print books, you can do whatever you want in different formats. It just needs to be clear in a contract that the translator is giving you the usage rights of that translation. So. So that's something that people sometimes find a bit scary, but actually it's really simple. And translations have been done for so long, it's a normal thing. It's just called slightly different. Has to be set out in a contract.
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A
And just on that, that's when the translator themselves is in Germany. Because if they are based somewhere else still doing a German translation, that's not necessary. So that's something else for people to consider is if they're like based in another country, then that's a different matter.
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B
Yes, definitely. To be fair, I would always try to get a translator based in the country because I mean, I'm a native German speaker, but I've been in Scotland for so long now that I am not confident enough to translate my own books anymore because I'm not surrounded by German 247 and my grammar is slightly off and I don't have that the kind of up to date modern lingo. Because if you aren't exposed to the language for a long time. So if it's a translator who's only just moved somewhere else or a few years years, that's fine. But if it's someone who's been there for like in the US or UK or somewhere else for 20 years, I would be a bit more hesitant. But that's just a personal perspective on that. One other thing that's different is there's sie and du. So there's two different kinds of you when you talk to someone. So there's the formal sie, which you use for basically amongst adults in business contacts, context. But even my German grandma, she had a friend and they used the formal sie for about 10 years as friends. Because in German etiquette the older person has to offer the younger person the informal do. And they never did that for some reason. And so we found it hilarious as kids that they were still using the formal sie as really good friends. So there's an entire culture there that people who haven't been to Germany or haven't lived there for a while just find a bit difficult because there's so many different unwritten rules about when you use sie. And when you use the informal do, it's weakened a bit over the years. And nowadays even strangers would sometimes use the informal du, depending on the context. But yeah, it really depends. So a good translator will usually do that themselves. They will find a scene where, for example, especially in romance, where you will meet strangers in the beginning, so you will use the formal sie. And then at some point you get to that point where that formality turns to informality and the translator will usually choose that and add a little extra scene or a sentence where they either offer it to each other or they just naturally switch into it. But then there might be like an internal little monologue of oh, here's just use the informal do. I guess we're at that stage or I really appreciate that so just to make it more natural because that's something I quite often see with AI translation where that doesn't happen and readers get like confused. Why did they just switch from Z to do without any kind of acknowledgment of that.
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A
This is the same in Spanish and other languages, I imagine.
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B
French as well. Italian too, I think. So.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It's a lot of European languages have this.
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A
Yeah. And I think that's something that English speakers just don't get. And it is a really. It is a really interesting moment, I think. And I mean, I guess that might not happen so much in other genres. Like that really is a thing in romance when. But I'm just, I was just thinking then about some of my thrillers. I mean they may never. They don't have time to get to do.
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B
Uh huh. Yeah. But then sometimes using do can also be a rude thing. So if you have an antagonist who really doesn't like your protagonist, they might just use do as a rude sort of. Of address. And again, that's something that English speakers just wouldn't understand or like wouldn't even think of because we just have the. You. We just have the one.
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A
It's the tone. Of course it's the tone.
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B
Exactly. Yeah.
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A
Okay, well, let's get into the actual translation of the books themselves. Now over the years I've worked with lots of humans. I've also licensed my rights. I've used different AI tools. I mean there are tons. But as we record this, what are the options that are available? And I guess some tips on working with humans and finding humans because it can be super pricey and of course most of us will never know about the quality until we publish it.
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B
Oh yes, definitely a note on that. I found that quite often you will already have German people on your newsletter list or on your social media and most of them will be super happy to give you some feedback on your translation. So that's something I've used a lot. Not for German because I speak the language, but when I did French and Italian translations I. My French is. Well, it used to be quite okay. It is possible at best now. So I would never feel confident enough to rate a translation. So I asked my newsletter list, are there any French people here who would be happy to read the book? I'll send you a free copy at the end and some swag. And there were a surprising amount of people who got back to me. And so the same applies to German and other languages because you. Yeah, if you don't speak the Language, you kind of sometimes lack the confidence of knowing if this is any good. And so getting some reader feedback is super helpful. But yeah, finding translators for humans the easiest, of course, is word of mouth, and I'm a big fan of that because you get instant feedback whether someone is good or not and whether it's easy to work with them. Then there's also freelancer platforms. Reedsy is one where everyone is vetted, so that's pretty good. But there's tons of other ones like Upwork and Fiverr. But there you have to do all the vetting yourself, so that takes a lot more time and effort. There's also more and more agencies, translator agencies who specialize in doing indie book translations. There's literary queens, there's Valentine translations, there's tons of them. And then there's also, which I think a lot of authors ignore or don't know about, translation databases. So there are two, for example, databases for German translators where you can search and you can usually narrow it down whether you want literary translators, what kind of fiction or nonfiction you want to. Because an important thing is a literary translator is very different from a just box standard translator who translates birth certificates or formal documents. You want someone who has experience with fiction, if you write fiction who knows about just adding drama through language that sometimes, for example, when you have an action scene, you might want shorter sentences. And if you have someone who doesn't know about stuff like that, they might just think, oh, in German it sounds really nice to have this really long sentence. So stuff like that is just those little nuances where having an experienced literary translator is a big bonus. There are some platforms that do royalty split translations that have been quite popular in the past, but most of them I wouldn't really recommend because you don't get those professional translators there. You usually get people who speak the language but don't really have much experience. And so you might end up with a pretty bad translation. Or people might just be using AI translations without telling you. If you use a human translator, always, always get a sample because yes, they might have the big amazing credentials, but until they've actually translated one of your books or a scene from your book, you don't really know how good they are. I like to always use, if I write romance, I give them a slightly sexy scene because sex scenes show you if someone can translate or not. It's just what I found. Because if it sounds absolutely awkward or more like mechanical rather than sort of emotional spicy thing, then that's a clear point for me to say. No, thank you. I'll look for someone else. So, action, sexy scenes, really emotional ones. Dialogue that has a bit of colloquial language or humor. Those are good scenes to choose as a sample because that really shows you if a translator can do their job or not. And then again, have some German people from your list give you some feedback on that. Also, if you work with human translators, always try to make sure that they will be available for your entire series. Because you. And not even just a series. If you have lots of books, try to grab that translator, lock them in your basement and never let them go. Because you want their style for all your books. Just like you have a style as an authority, translators have a style and that will always shine through. As much as they try to be as honest and as close to your original, a bit of their style will always come through. And so it helps to have the same translator for at least the same series, preferably for as many of your books as possible. So you really want to tell them, in the beginning, this series had like nine books. I want you to do all of these. Even if we only do a few of them at the beginning, are you available to do the rest later? Because you don't want to end up with having to find a new translator in the middle of the series. And then it gives you a whole lot of extra work with trying to first have a world bible that explains which words, for example, get translated and which get left as the original and stuff like that. So that's a lot of extra work. When it comes to non humans, it's very different because of course you don't need to do all that vetting because yes, tools have different capabilities and abilities. But yeah, in the end, if you put your translation into a translation tool, you will always get a slightly different output in the end. And so it's not quite the same where you need an entire vetting process.
- [41:13]
A
So just on the human translation, I think I'd be right in saying that every single author in the world would love to have the best human translator translating their book, whatever genre is. I mean, that would just be amazing for all of us. But let's face it, that's extremely expensive. So if I. Let's say I've got a 70,000 word thriller, how much money are we talking about? Like a sort of approximate. So people know what.
- [41:40]
B
Yeah, usually it goes by word, but by word in the target language. So it depends on the translator. But traditional translators usually go by the target language because that, that's what they actually do as their output. The average at the moment is anything from about 7 to 9 cents. As sort of the medium price you will find cheaper people and that's Euro cents. You can go up as high as you want, really. I have definitely seen translators who charge $0.15 and above per word, but those will usually be the ones who have worked with a lot of trad publishers who are used to being paid like that. Although even in trad publishing the rates are going down and with more and more authors wanting translations, I think in general rates are luckily going down. Good for us, not so good for the translators. But yeah, you're definitely looking at the thousands. Even if you translate novellas usually. And then depends some of them, some translators have editing included, sometimes they don't. A lot of them will have cooperations with other translators where they then give the translation to another translator for them to edit it. Sometimes that's included in the price, sometimes it's extra. But always make sure it gets edited. Because just like when we write a book, it will never be exactly perfect. And I say that as someone who writes very clean because I have a journalism background, so I used to write really fast and clean for deadlines. But there will always be a few typos that just wriggle their way in. And typos are evil like that. So yeah, it's the same with translations.
- [43:09]
A
Yes. So we're probably looking at 2000-10,000 dollars, whatever euros, we're talking about quite a lot. And this is the main reason, I think that now with AI becoming a lot better, that people are now looking at this. Now originally, like I didn't even know, probably eight years now since I did my first, might even be a decade or more. I did at some point do a version in DeepL, which was an early AI translation tools non fiction, and then paid a editor, German editor, to then edit that in German. And those books still get good reviews. But now people are looking at options like Globe Scribe and Scribe Shadow or even just using Claude or Chat GPT. And I'm actually working at the moment on a Claude code pipeline. Lots of different QA passes. And that's been really interesting for me because I can say, okay, now you're a reader who likes these kind of books, read it for that. And because we can now put really big books in, I can actually get a lot of really interesting feedback. So I feel like there's a lot potential with AI, but potential for good stuff, potential for bad stuff too. So talk a bit about that and what to Watch out for.
- [44:23]
B
Okay, so I'm very much pro AI and I use AI in lots of different things in my business. So just to preempt that that I'm not anti AI when it comes to anything. However, with translations, I'm still a bit wary just because I have seen a lot of bad AI translations. And to be fair, I've experimented with Matzat myself for one of my other pen names. And it was readable. It was definitely readable. It had sometimes beautiful, gorgeous prose, really. But there were occasionally, quite often even bits where I stumbled as a native speaker where it's readable. And if I'm like, just need a little quick book in between, I would be mostly happy with that. I would read that. It's the same as some of the in early KU where you found a lot of bad quality writing, but you just wanted to read it because the story was pretty good or because you were reading it in KU and so it didn't really matter that much. So there is that spectrum of quality where you have the yes, it's good enough to read, but is it good enough to be like up to your standards? And that's a decision that everyone has to make for themselves if they want the same quality that they did put into their English book or if they are fine with just offering that book to a new audience because maybe you wouldn't be able to do it otherwise. And I totally see that translation is so expensive. I don't even know how much I have spent on translations over the past few years. Years. I'm lucky that most of my books make it back within the first weeks or months. I've never had a book that didn't make its money back, but I have heard a lot of people where that's not the case. And so. And it is a lot of investment and I would never tell someone to go into debt or anything to do translations like do it when you're at a time where you can afford it or where you can also afford the loss if it doesn't work out now, AI has changed that slightly because it now opens it up to. To almost anyone. Yes, some of the translation tools, AI tools are a few hundreds, but if you do it like you said in Claude or ChatGPT or something where you already have a subscription, it can actually be quite cheap. You can do it for a few dollars or pounds. I loved, by the way, I love having someone in the uk. I'm so used to automatically saying everything in dollars, but actually I should be using pounds. So Yeah, I think, think if you know what you're doing and like you clearly do, you've got that several passes, you know what you're doing. With AI, if someone just puts their book into Claude or ChatGPT or you name your random tool, it might just not be good enough because you need to be.
- [46:54]
A
It won't be good enough if you just do that. We know that you have to have QA passes, quality assurance, you have to have, have rules per genre. But I mean there's ways of doing it. But you, it's kind of like you have to get to know how translation works. It's a process. It's not just a translation. Like you put something in Google Translate or a menu or something. Right. Because we do care and I think that's really important.
- [47:20]
B
Yeah, I think if you don't know how AI works, that you need detailed prompts, that you need a style guide, that you need all that extra material and not just your book, if that you need all those rules, then, then please don't do it. If you value your German readers, and I think sometimes when I see people just churn out those translations without doing any quality control, using exactly the same cover or even just putting a German flag on it or something, I just really feel really bad for German readers because they're not being valued as having the same sort of value to us as authors, as our English speaking readers. Maybe I'm a bit biased there because I read in multiple languages and and I want to be able to get the same sort of quality in all languages and I want the author to think of me as being special because I'm their reader and I'm their customer. So I think we are on the way where AI translation can be almost autonomous. I would personally always have a human look over it just because even with like I know what I'm doing and I'm almost happy with my translation system that I've built now in AI AI, but it still needs that human touch for a few things. It still needs me to tell the AI. For example, this is where we switch from Sie to du. This is where I need you to keep these words in. For example, I write a lot of Scottish books and so words like glen or Loch, they are words that I want the same in my German translation. I don't want it translated to the German equivalent of lake because Dutch just misses that Scottish context and things like that. It needs that instruction. A human translator will usually know that and chat to you about which words do you want to Keep. Which ones do you want to have translated? AI just needs our guidance, our helping hand. And if we don't know enough about the target language, we just miss knowing that. Now, there's a lot of tools that do it all for you, basically, where they set up all these rules. Again, they are. I think many of them are at a very advanced stage now. But AI isn't perfect and it likes to hallucinate, it likes to add random things. And so I will always still have a human touch to it at the end, even if it's just a quick edit. Now, I think a lot of people think that they just need a proofread after that. But AI doesn't really make typos or not to an extent that humans do. So proofreading isn't really the thing that's needed for an AI translation. It is actual editing, where you have. Where you go for the style, the phrasing and sometimes the context. Because there's I. There's one example I always like to give. I have an alien romance where they go on a honeymoon. And because the alien, he's an alien, she's human, and so he misunderstands and thinks she wants to go to an actual movie. And so it's a little pun in the book, but it doesn't work in German at all because the word honeymoon has nothing to do with moons or planets in German. So if an AI would probably just try to translate that in a way that's quite close to the original. But my German translator, she had to come up with several different ways of fixing that issue because humor is hard and it's hard even for humans to get the humor were translated in a way that is still funny but also culturally appropriate. And I think if you have a book that is full of puns and it gets harder with AI, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it needs a lot of handholding.
- [50:54]
A
Yeah, I think humour is hard to translate in general, isn't it? But let's move on to the distribution because I, again, having done quite a lot of different languages over the years, I do use Amazon KU for my. My books in German and Italian and Spanish and some French. And so I haven't gone wide in terms of ebook and print or audio. In fact, because I have a lot of books, I feel like, although I have fewer books than you, to be honest, but hard to go wide in English, let alone in other languages. But you mentioned earlier that, what was it? Talia has 40% of the market or something, and that Special editions and print books are important. So what are the decisions we have to make around the actual publishing? Publishing.
- [51:40]
B
So in Germany, they did a really cool thing and I wish they'd done that in other countries. So when they saw, when the bookshops saw that Amazon was growing and posing a threat to them, not just with print books, but also with ebooks, a lot of the German bookstores got together and they formed the Tolino Alliance. They have big book chains like Talia Hugendubel, but also I think it was over 1,500 indie bookshops that all got together and they all support this ecosystem for ebooks, which means they all share the same E reader, they share the same sort of backend for the shops, which made it really easy for them because they didn't all have to develop an ebook system and it saved them a lot of money. It made it really easy to tell readers, this is the Tolino system. You can get your books at our bookshops for that, but you can read them on your Tolino E reader. No matter where you get the books from, it's actually the E readers. The Tollino E readers are the same as Kobo E readers just rebranded. So, yeah, they've got the. That big advantage there that these independent or even book chains got together. And now it's hard to find numbers because Amazon doesn't really like to share their numbers. But it's about 40% of the German ebook market, which means it rivals Amazon. They have about the same. And then the rest is split by Apple Books, Google Play and some of the smaller players. So it is a huge chunk of the market. The now I'm wide with pretty much all my English books. And so for me, I looked into ku, but then when I saw that it was like I'm going to miss out on 60% of the market. Even if Amazon is 45%, that's still a big chunk and I didn't want to miss out on that. And so I decided to go wide. And to be fair, I haven't regretted it because Tolino are amazing to work with. I like to compare them to Kobo because they have a. A really lovely human team where you can just email them and tell them I've got a new release coming up and they will put you into different promos and it's all free, so they're marketing.
- [53:39]
A
Can you publish direct to Tolino or do you use like drafted digital?
- [53:42]
B
Yes, you can publish direct to Tolino and that's actually the best way of doing it. You don't have access to their marketing opportunities if you use a distributor. So the Tolino dashboard, annoyingly, is all in German, but by now every browser has a translating plugin built in. And I know lots of authors who don't speak a single word of German who navigate to lino very successfully. They started doing with only ebooks in the beginning. And then about two weeks after the first edition of my book on German translations was published, they introduced print books, which meant my book was immediately out of date. I was fuming. But this time they introduced audiobooks a few weeks before my Kickstarter launch for the second edition. So this time time, the audiobook part is included. And I was very happy about that because, yeah, it was a pain to just tell everyone, well, this book is out now, but it's actually missing a big part of how to do print books in Germany. So Tolino does print ebooks, audiobooks. And of course, just because if you're in KU with your eBooks, doesn't mean you can't publish your print books via Tolino. And I highly recommend that because IngramSpark, which I mean most of us indies use for distribution for print, print books, doesn't get you into the German bookstores they used to. And then German stores have fixed price laws where books have to be the same price in all stores. And Ingram kept going against that. They kept sending them the wrong prices. And so German bookstores at some point just said, nope, we've got enough of this. We no longer take books from ingramspark. So now Tolino, in my opinion, is the best way of getting your books listed in German online bookstore stores. But they can also help you get into brick and mortar stores. One of my books was featured by them, I think two years ago, and it was like in 300 or something of their shops all across Germany. It had like its own little pedestal and it was amazing. So, yeah, Tolino, they love working with their indie authors. They also love romance, which is always a bonus because some stores are more prude than others. And it's really easy to work with them. They speak perfect English, so you can do all your communication outside of their dashboard in English. So Tolino is great. Now, their audiobooks, that's a very new feature. Until they did that, it was much harder for German audiobook distribution because places like Inaudio, former Findaway and other distributors wouldn't get you into the Tolino alliance stores for audio. And again, that's a big chunk that we were missing out on. And I was always looking for ways to get my German audiobooks into those stores. But the German distributors that I found were really difficult to upload to, to be honest, and I'm a very technical person, but it challenged even me. So I did not like that experience at all. At some point I really just gave up and wanted to throw my computer out of the window. So when Tolino introduced that, it was yay. I was celebrating. And you internally, the only problem with their distribution at the moment for audio, because it's so new, is that you can't exclude any shops. So it's all or nothing. They will get you into all the different places, including Audible, Spotify, you name it, lots of different streaming services and retailers, but you can't exclude any. So while they don't actually want exclusivity, if you published it yourself at the same time through ACX or in audio or something else, you would have duplicates. And of course we try to avoid those for to make readers.
- [57:07]
A
Is it human narration only or do they also accept AI narration?
- [57:11]
B
They accept AI narration. The thing with Trollino is that they want everything made very clear. If you publish any books with them that have an AI production aspect, you need to put that into your impressum or for audiobooks, there's a box to take to make it clear. So they are open to it all. You just need to declare it.
- [57:30]
A
Yeah. Which I think should be true everywhere, to be fair.
- [57:32]
B
Oh, definitely. And a lot of German distributors while I was researching for this book, look, one thing I always looked at is do they need you to declare your AI use? And more and more of German distributors and retailers now want you to do that. So I think that's the way it's going. And it's not as a judgment thing. I think it's just making it clear to readers. In Germany it's all about transparency. That's why there are all those laws with gdpr. Everyone will have heard about that one by now. But there's lots of other laws where it's all about the consumer rights and the transparency. And that's one of them.
- [58:02]
A
So is there anything else in the distribution side we need to think about?
- [58:06]
B
One thing I like to highlight is libraries, because that's quite a big thing in Germany too. Still, I mean, by now I keep telling you, they love books and so and bookstores and they love libraries. And some of the ways we get our English books into libraries, like a distributor, like drafted digital for OverDrive. OverDrive is growing in Germany, but there are other systems, like online, just to name One, and you can't get into those through for example Draft two, Digital or even Publish Drive and Streetlib. And so Tolino gets you into those. And there's also subscription platforms that are growing. I think it's the same as in the English speaking market. People love a subscription and I mean I love them, I just don't like exclusivity. So I very much support any subscription platform that doesn't require me to be exclusive to them. And Skooby is one of them. They used to be an independent platform and then the Tolino alliance bought them and so now they're integrated into the Tolino stores, which means it's really prominent. Basically anytime you go to a book, an ebook on for example Tulia, it will have a banner there. You can also get this in our subscription. So it's taken a while to grow, but actually in December I now made more with their subscription program than I made in book sales. And I think three of my books were like in their top 10 in December. So to be fair, that was a pretty good month. But it definitely shows that it can take a while to grow these subscription platforms. But when you do, it can be really successful and it can be very much worth it. So I highly suggest looking into those sort of platforms too. Not just the standard retailer sellers and the platforms that you're already used to.
- [59:55]
A
No, that's fantastic. Right, so we've now got translations, they're on the various stores and then just like in English, one of our next challenges is actually marketing the books. Now this then becomes another challenge because one of the reasons I am in KU for foreign languages is because you get the five days for free and you can do Amazon ads. I mean you can do Amazon ads for one wide books too. But I mean it's kind of easier to know that there's some options for marketing at all which. And I don't do email marketing, I don't do social media, so I am pretty bad at marketing in foreign languages. So what are your suggestions for those who want to do more active marketing in German especially, or even if I guess we don't speak German, so it can't be all the personal stuff. But are there also advertising things like BookBub or what are our options? Basically?
- [60:46]
B
Okay, there's quite a few things. It's not quite as easy as in English of course, but I think sometimes you have to remember that you already have most of the material for marketing. When you released a book, you will have made graphics in English and you will have written a newsletter. And you will have done some social media posts and all that material is already there. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can just translate that. And for that AI translation is really good because it's very quick. You don't have to bother your translator, you can just get that done. So I think that's what I had to like, remember because in the beginning I did everything from scratch and it took me forever and I was hating it. And then I realized, well, I couldn't just look at the newsletter I wrote three years ago when that book released in English and translate that and then that's done within a minute and I can send that out. So I think remember that you have a lot of content already. Then there's no book bop or nothing as big as Bookbub. There is a site called Burch Deals which sends out both newsletters for reduced or free books. They also send out newsletters for new releases and I use them for pretty much all my new releases, or at least always the first in series. They're nowhere near as big as bookbub, so don't expect miracles, but I generally always break even or a bit more. It's hard to tell of course, especially if you do several things for a new release. But like my instinctive look on this is that it's worth it. So Bookdeals is one. There's a few other promo sites, but to be honest, I've not really found any of them to give me a positive roi. So yeah, I experiment with them occasionally and I listed them all in my book just for completeness. But Buchdiels is the big one. Then there is Lovely Books, which is the German Goodreads. Some Germans also use Goodreads, so always make sure to have all your German books listed there. But Lovely Books is the biggest one it. I love that place because people are so much kinder than on Goodreads. I avoid Goodreads completely. If I need a review, I send my assistant there to look at reviews. I don't go there. It is scary. Lovely Books. The name is kind of telling. It is a more lovely place. People are generally more friendly. They are probably a bit more critical when they write reviews than they are on retailers, but but I have found it really nice to build a community there. And you can do these book clubs where you give away a copy of your book either as print books or I always do ebooks because I don't want to send books to Germany and then people discuss the book as a sort of book club and then they review it at the end. And I have had great success with that. I've built up a community of readers who will now buy my books too, even if they don't get them for free. I found some better readers through that, so I love lovely books. The annoying thing again is it's in German. However their support all speaks English and you can email them with questions. They're really good. Even if you don't plan to run any book clubs or anything like that because you don't speak the language, I would always advise to just set up an author profile there because it makes it easier for your books to be found. You can track reviews, you can track reads and so that you just gives you an extra place to kind of get more visibility for free. Ads are yeah, there's not much difference there compared to what you do for your English language books. The one thing is with Facebook ads now because of EU data protection laws it's much harder to target because people can opt out of ads and targeting. So but in general cost per click ads are cheaper than in the US or the uk. So that's about bonus book talk is big and only growing there. I don't really do social media for my German books because I just don't have the bandwidth. So I'm like you there, I wish I could and I know some people who outsource that. In an ideal world I would have a social media account for every single language but it's not an ideal world and I just have limited hour in the hours in the day. But even just creating an account so that people can tag you, that people can can find you can already be a good start. And then one thing actually that's not as not maybe a marketing strategy as such, but something I like to highlight is pre orders. So if you write in series, always, always make sure that the next books in your series are up for pre order. Because German readers have been burned so many times by authors or even publishers who just translate the book one in a series and then then stop. And so they are quite hesitant sometimes to start a new series when they see it's book one of something and they don't see the next book up for pre order. To be fair, it's similar in English. I always make sure to have a pre order up for the next book because of that because there are people who would just not read the series until it's complete or until they know it will be complete at some point. So always set up a pre order if you can, of course don't set it up when you don't actually know when your translation is being done or or choose a date far in the future. But just make it very clear to your readers that you are intending to translate the entire series, that you're not going to disappoint them, that they're not just wasting their money on a book one only to never find out what happens next.
- [65:53]
A
Fantastic. Well this is a big decision for people to make I think, because also there's no point in doing one book in German and then not doing anything else in the same way as doing one book in English or any language. You kind of. You have to think about investing in an audience audience. So lots for people to think about. The book is fantastic. It's called Self Publishing in German. So where can people find you and your books online?
- [66:17]
B
Well for my author facing thing you just go to skymckinnon.com authors and there you find the book about German translations. You also find more information on what I do. You can book consultations with me. I love doing those one to ones especially about translations because you can really dive into someone's catalogue and look at what what would be a good strategy for someone rather than just in general otherwise it's skymckinn.com for all my romance. If you want adorable children's books, it's islawinter.com and winter with a Y.
- [66:51]
A
Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time Sky. That was great.
- [66:54]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [66:59]
A
So I hope you found the interview with sky interesting and useful. If you are self publishing in German or indeed other languages and country marketing markets, let me know what resonated. Please leave a comment on the podcast show notes@thecreativepenn.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me joannathecreativepenn.com also please send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. Coming up this week I've got an in betweenisode on AI creativity and the future of publishing with Nadeem Sadeq, who runs a company called Shimmer AI which does AI powered advertising for mainly traditional publishers. And yes, traditional publishers are using AI in their marketing. So next Monday we're back on writing craft as I'm talking to Sarah Kaufman about verbs. Yes, verbs and how to write more strongly with them. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show notes@thecreativepenn.com podcast and you can get your free author blueprint@thecreativepen.com blueprint if you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X hecreative pen or on Instagram and Facebook jfpenauthor Happy writing and I'll see you next time.