How the (book) world works

When my first book appeared, in 1994, I spent a day in London giving radio interviews. I was young and so my publisher sent a PR lady to hold my hand (metaphorically). She came from a famous English literary family. In the taxi I told her I was worried I’d get bad reviews.

“Don’t worry. You won’t,” she said.

“How do you know?” I asked. I knew she hadn’t read the book. (I now know that PRs never read the book.)

She explained: my book, Football Against the Enemy, wasn’t controversial; I didn’t have a reputation to bash, I hadn’t made any enemies yet, and so the reviewers would be gentle. It was a useful insight into a process that presumably hadn’t changed much since her ancestor had published his great novel in 1932. It probably hadn’t changed much since 1832.

I’ve just been plugging my latest book in the US. Writing books, I’ve discovered over the years, is like running a small international business. Being an author teaches you something about how the world works.

In the first years after Football Against the Enemy appeared, it got a few translations. This was not because the book was brilliant. It helped that it was about football rather than a boring topic (“Books on Africa don’t sell,” an agent of mine once warned me anxiously). But mostly, the book got translated because it was in English. Many foreign publishers can read English, and so three-quarters of all translations of books each year are from English. I conducted a controlled experiment of this proposition by writing two books in Dutch. They disappeared. Writing a book in any language but English is, almost always, like throwing a stone into a pond and watching it sink.

Gradually, as new markets emerged, my English books got translated into new languages. This gave me a series of primers on how different countries do business. Years ago I’d asked a Chinese friend whether my books might sell in China. He shook his head. Any Chinese wanting to read them, he said, could find the worthwhile bits in pirated versions. Something has changed: last year a Chinese publisher (based in Taiwan) translated a book of mine.

I owe Abu Dhabi for having Football Against the Enemy translated into Arabic. The emirate was funding the translation of 100 books a year into Arabic, because nobody else would. I was invited to speak at the Abu Dhabi book fair. Just before I went onstage, the beautiful veiled PR lady turned to me and asked, “There aren’t any politics in it, are there? They don’t like politics here.”

“Errr, the book’s about football and politics,” I said.

Then I gave my talk. The Abu Dhabi book fair is apparently the premier event in the Arab literary calendar, but 11 of the 12 audience members were there because they had to be. They sat with heads bowed in postures of agonised boredom. I kept my talk as brief as possible. When I finished nobody said anything, except a black woman wearing full hijab who asked intelligent penetrating questions until someone managed to shut her up. Then we went back to my publisher’s stall, and gave away copies of the book to passersby. Nobody buys books in Abu Dhabi.

I discovered by accident that Football Against the Enemy had made it into Persian. One morning I was googling myself (an excellent way of keeping up with the news) when I found a semi-accurate description of the book on the website of the Tehran International Book Fair. The final words were: “ ‘Football against the Enemies’ is presented by Cheshmeh Publications in 430 pages and price of 80.000 Rials.”

Cheshmeh Publications hadn’t told me. I was outraged: even the Russian publisher had paid for the translation, though admittedly years late. I contacted my British publisher. “Nothing you can do,” she said, trying not to chortle at the thought of my flying to Tehran to enforce my intellectual property rights. Rogue states get to steal other people’s books with impunity. Perhaps it even makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Still, my share of 80,000 rials might not have amounted to much. The world’s biggest book market remains the US, and blessedly for authors of soccer books, Americans are now switching on to soccer. They’ve stopped Americanising the rest of the world, and are now being globalised instead.

But even American contracts haven’t made me rich. The way this industry works, if you buy my book for $15, I eventually get $1. That means I have to sell an improbable quantity of books to justify the effort. To help the cause, I went out to dinner in San Francisco last week with five booksellers. We had a brilliant time. Late in a drunken evening I asked one of them, “Six people having dinner – how many books does that sell?”

“That’s never been the point,” she said.

simon.kuper@ft.com

‘The Football Men’ is published by Simon & Schuster (£16.99)