Why Translating Your Book May Require a Cover Change—and What to Do about It
Grace Snoke
You are expanding your market base and audience by translating your books into foreign languages, and now you’re ready to make a critical decision: do you keep your existing cover design, or do you create a new design that appeals to the new market?
We know how traditional publishers handle translations. They often create a different cover for each language, with some languages having small changes and others receiving a completely different cover. Translations already require a financial investment for both indie authors and traditional publishing companies, but an additional cover can add a new—and sometimes significant—cost to the decision.
Sticking with your current cover design may lead readers to recognize your book easier and align with your author brand whereas new covers could better appeal to your new target audience. There may be elements on your cover that need to be removed because they go against dominant cultural or religious beliefs in certain countries. There are other formatting issues to keep in mind as well, including languages that are read right to left, the hyphenation of foreign language words, and the need for accent marks or slight changes to the title text to make your cover text readable to your new audience, even if you stick with your original design.
What is the best choice for indie authors dipping their toes into translation and foreign markets? As always, there is no one-and-done way for indies to approach translations—but there are a few things you can consider before making the choice for your business.
E-Book Covers
After finding a translator, many authors decide whether they want to convert their existing e-book’s cover to the new language or invest funds in a new cover. Even though paperback books seem to be in higher demand in European countries, e-books still have a strong place in the market. If you’re going to update your cover, the first place to start is with the e-book design since it will play a large part in the paperback.
But how do you know whether your existing cover will work in a new market?
Start by looking at popular e-books on Amazon in that specific country to see if your design and typography will work with other books in your genre. Then, consult with either your translator, since they should know the market as well, or an author who publishes in that language as their native language and would be willing to give advice on whether your cover would work for the language.
Changes may include what, if any, symbols are used on a cover, differences in colors, or even whether people are pictured. For some translated editions, especially those translated into Asian and Arabic languages, you might need to find a designer who can create a cover that meets the cultural and religious expectations of a particular country.
For other languages, your book’s title, when translated, may not work with your current typography. You may have to consider either changing the layout of the typography or creating a cover that would work with the new title. Not all fonts have the diacritics, or accented characters, needed for foreign languages, so you may need to change your cover’s fonts to be compatible. In addition, very few English fonts have characters to accommodate languages that don’t use the Roman alphabet, like Japanese or Korean. If you want a prettier font in these languages, you may have to pay for a font with characters you like.
If it’s not feasible to create new covers for each language, consider starting with languages where the only change that needs to be made is to the typography and then expand from there.
No matter what you decide, there will be other indie authors who are making the same decisions as you are. Self-Publishing Formula creator Mark Dawson has different covers for his books in English and German whereas 20BooksTo50K® co-founder Craig Martelle’s English and German covers are the same except for the typography.
Paperback Covers
Unfortunately, it is rare that you can use the same paperback cover for your translated book as you did for the book in its original language. Often, there are additional pages in translated books, as well as additional back matter with the translator’s information. It’s also important to remember that, for some languages, like German, words on the spine are printed opposite from how English words are laid out. Any back cover text will likely need to be translated or reformatted as well.
Knowing how the spine and the back of the book should be laid out ahead of time can save you time and money on cover production. (As a translation cover designer, I always provide covers to the translator before finalizing them to make sure everything is formatted correctly.) Ask your cover designer if they will allow you to share a translated design with the translator to verify all is good before you finalize it.
Interior formatting
If you are used to formatting in English, you wouldn’t know how rules change when formatting other languages. Unless you’re told otherwise—and some software can’t be told another language is being used—formatting software will hyphenate foreign languages like they would in English, which is often incorrect.
Much like with paperback and e-book covers, you must also ensure the font you use for your book’s interior has the accent marks and appropriate quotation marks available for the manuscript.
If you are formatting Arabic or Asian translations, you may need to have software that will format your text to be read right to left or your paragraphs to run horizontally or vertically in the manuscript. If your translator doesn’t format the text for you, you may need to outsource the work to a freelancer who has software that can accommodate these languages. It’s also a good idea to have a native speaker or two proofread your interior file in order to catch any errors you wouldn’t know exist.
Wrapping it up with a pretty bow
There is no one-size-fits all answer to the questions of how to decide on a cover change for your translated book. It’s a good idea to spend a little time researching not only your sales data but also the data of similar books in your genre in that country. Reach out to your readers who may natively speak the language as well to help decide what is best for your business.
Grace Snoke
