Stats (German Books into English)

It's really hard to find out how many books get translated into English every year as a whole, and harder still to break them down by type. We have the Three Percent lists for the States, which cover first-time translations of fiction and poetry. And for the UK and Ireland, there are stats for the years 2000, 2005 and 2008, collected and published by Literature Across Frontiers.

So I was glad, at least, to find reliable-looking information on foreign rights sales of titles to different countries from Germany, in the stolidly informative publication Buch und Buchhandel in Zahlen 2014.

Rights sales as a whole are down from a peak in 2007, when 9225 titles were sold abroad by German publishers. In 2013 there were 6466 sales. The top buyers were China, Spain and Italy. 158 books sold to British publishers, none to Ireland, 9 to Canada, 196 to the USA, and 8 to Australia and New Zealand. That's just plain books. Both American and British publishers bought in more German books than in 2012, and 106 of the sales into English-language territories were literary titles. Here's an extract from one of the book's tables, breaking down what kind of books are getting translated from German to English:

Type of book	Rights sales to English-language publishers, 2013
Adult literature total	106
Narrative fiction	82
Thrillers	12
SF, fantasy	0
Poetry, drama	10
Comic, humour, satire	2
Children’s/YA total	31
Picture books	15
Early readers	3
Up to age 11	0
Age 12 and up	5
Children’s non-fiction	7
Travel	12
Self-help	53
Humanities, arts, music total	15
Natural sciences total	104
General sciences	45
Technology	39
Medicine	9
Social sciences, law, economics	15
School and learning	5
Other non-fiction	39
Total	444

Only Italy bought more rights to fiction titles in 2013 (115), with France and Spain buying 103 apiece. One reason for the comparatively high numbers is that there are six different countries doing the buying when you consider Anglophone publishing as a whole, but it's definitely a good thing for German writers because a publication in English means people in other countries, particularly editors, can also read their books.   

These figures apply to German publishers only, not those based in Switzerland or Austria.