Open Letter In the New York Times
The publishing industry is in a tailspin; translated works account for, at best, 3 percent of the American book market; and budgets for higher education are shrinking. But none of this seems to deter Open Letter Books, a small, year-old press here affiliated with the University of Rochester that publishes nothing but literature in translation.
“There’s a set of readers out there that’s very interested in translations and international literature and is not getting what it wants,” said Chad W. Post, Open Letter’s director. “So we believe our business model can work. American literature has a lot of great works. But English-speaking readers don’t have full access to voices and viewpoints from around the world, and we’re trying to rectify that.”
Though none of Open Letter’s 16 titles has yet sold more than 3,000 copies, its efforts have quickly attracted attention and critical praise. Open Letter books, including the recently published “Season of Ash,” by the Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi, have appeared on Best of 2009 lists; and Amazon.com, which has begun an effort to bring more international writers to the attention of American readers, recently awarded Open Letter a $20,000 grant to support publication of “The Wall in My Head,” an anthology by East European writers about the collapse of Communism there.
The world of American publishers specializing in translation is small, and each house has adopted a slightly different strategy to stay afloat. Archipelago Books has gone the nonprofit route and solicits tax-deductible contributions; Europa Editions is the extension of an Italian house and publishes only trade paperbacks; and the Dalkey Archive Press, where Mr. Post, 34, worked until coming here, is both a nonprofit entity and, like Open Letter, tied to an academic institution, the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
Read the full article at New York Times