FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Pitching to Overseas Markets

January 5, 2022 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

Pitching to Overseas Markets

By Christina Hamlett

On one of the writer-centric pages I follow on Facebook, an author was lamenting she hadn’t been able to get any US publisher nibbles on her new manuscript. No less than twenty respondents advised, “If nothing works, you can always sell it to someplace like England.” Seriously?! This seems to be the same skewed thinking as saying, “If I can’t get a traditional publisher, I guess I can always self-publish.”

While both of these embrace a defeatist mindset of “settling” for less than you want, the first one is the more egregious in its assumption that overseas markets (1) have lower standards and (2) will eagerly grab up anything from an outsider.

The perception that foreign buyers are “lesser” entities ascribing to more relaxed standards in evaluating creative material is not only unfounded but woefully myopic. The rules are actually stricter and often give preference to local talent first. India, for example, annually produces twice the number of films as Hollywood. This doesn’t mean, however, you have twice the chances of breaking in if you’re not already immersed in—and respectful of—the culture.

TALKING THE TALK

Unless you have an intimate familiarity with the places and people you’re writing about, one of the biggest things which will trip you up is a surface imitation of dialects and conversational nuances. No matter how many BBC television shows you’ve seen, a British publisher or producer can spot a pretender in a heartbeat by the way words are spelled, ordered and colloquial expressions are incorporated. Likewise, the liberal use of American slang either poses a barrier to global-friendly understanding or suggests a meaning which wasn’t intended. (i.e., “We didn’t have dessert because we were stuffed.”)

While online resources such as Gatekeeper Press (https://gatekeeperpress.com/writing-accents-and-dialects) The Online Slang Dictionary (http://onlineslangdictionary.com), A Dictionary of Slang http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang), and The Septic’s Companion (http://septicscompanion.com), are a starting point, they sometimes ignore when popular usage of a word or phrase has already gone stale. When, for instance, was the last time anything was called “groovy?”

My best recommendation is to put a second set of eyes on your manuscript and preferably those of someone who lives in the country to which you’d like to sell your work. My own example comes from a script I penned which was set Down Under. Thank goodness for an Aussie colleague who gently advised that not everyone in her part of the world said “Crikey” and spoke like Paul Hogan or the late Steve Irwin.

RESPECTING BOUNDARIES AND TABOOS

If you want to be a writer without borders, you need to be well versed in what your overseas markets consider acceptable vs. offensive content. As we have seen in the US, there has been an escalation in both the erasure of discriminatory ethnic and gender stereotyping and the inclusivity of marginalized populations.

While some of these progressive movements have been slower to catch on in foreign countries, there are nonetheless longstanding cultural mores, religious tenets and socioeconomic factors abroad which would cause a project to be rejected if these were broken by your characters.

Here’s a sampler:

Cambodians believe a photo should never contain three people.
Contrasted to Korean dining, food is never shared from the same plate in Nepal.
As popular as public displays of affection are in the US and Europe, Ghana and the Sudan frown on it.
Interfaith marriage is discouraged in certain cultures and religions.
Homosexuality is criminalized and punishable by death in Muslim nations, Africa, parts of Asia and Russia.
In China, it is illegal to not visit elderly parents on a regular basis.

Additional resources can be found at Business Insider (https://www.businessinsider.com/american-customs-that-are-offensive-abroad-2015-8), 20 Cultural Taboos (https://www.ufic.ufl.edu/Documents/20%20Cultural%20Taboos.pdf), Your Dictionary (https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-taboo.html) and Jessie on a Journey (https://jessieonajourney.com/10-quirky-taboos-from-around-the-world).

WHO’S READING WHAT WHERE

What do people like to read in other countries? One of the best graphs I found on this subject is at https://studyinginswitzerland.com/what-people-read-around-the-world. Who would have guessed, for instance, that Mexico likes horror, Turkey likes adventure and Finland is keen on poetry? Not surprisingly, romance and fantasy are popular across the board, for who among us in such a troubled world doesn’t crave the escapism of a happily ever after and the promise of a little magic along the way!

FINDING OVERSEAS MARKETS

One of my favorite go-to sites for finding publishers open to submissions is Reedsy. In the search for vetted UK markets, for example, https://blog.reedsy.com/publishers/gb currently yields 87 potential venues. On this same page, authors can also find listings for Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Another route is The International ISBN Agency’s Global Register of Publishers (https://www.isbn-international.org) which requires registration to access contact information to over 200 publishers worldwide. You might also find inspiration at Publishers Global (https://www.publishersglobal.com/directory/subject/foreign-language-publishers) which has an easy to navigate toolbar covering all possible genres of fiction and nonfiction.

Always review submission guidelines judiciously to ensure they are open to submissions from non-domiciled authors.

In conclusion, when you’re courting a prospective match for your submission either at home or abroad, nothing less will do than identifying all the things you have in common, playing to your strengths, and speaking their language, metaphorically and otherwise.

*****

Former actress and director Christina Hamlett is an award-winning author whose credits to date include 47 books, 266 stage plays and squillions of articles. She is also a script consultant for stage and screen and a professional ghostwriter. www.authorhamlett.com. The first three books in her new UK cozy mystery series are available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

A Little Drama in Dunster (available as ebook and paperback):

The curtain is about to go up on an original play in the medieval village of Dunster. But will a local murder and a crashing chandelier bring down the first performance just two days before opening night? Rochelle Reid and her boyfriend Jon Tapping are in town to support a former neighbor’s debut as an actor with an amateur theatre troupe. Unscripted moments with the show’s beloved director, tensions with the wife of a player booted from the cast, the sketchy memories of a former soldier with PTSD and a slow-burning theme of revenge, however, might spell curtains for both of them before their Exmoor holiday is over.