How to Market a Book Abroad When You Don't Live There

To market a book abroad when you don't live there, put your effort into what works from a distance: a good book page in the readers' language, first reviews, and a small list of people who love books like yours. Most readers will find the book online, not in a neighborhood bookstore. Your disadvantage is that you have no local network, so you need to build one slowly, with the help of someone who speaks the language.

What's different when you market a book abroad

At home you have advantages you no longer even notice. Friends who will buy and tell others. A store that might agree to a launch evening. A journalist who knows someone who knows you. You understand without thinking which sentence sounds good and which one sounds like it's trying too hard.

In another country you have none of these. And you don't always know what sounds natural in the language. That doesn't mean it can't be done, just that the order is different.

Start with the book's page

Everything you do will lead people to the same place: the book's page in the store. If that page is weak, everything else is wasted.

• A title and description written for these readers. Not a translation of the Hebrew description, but text that's been rewritten. We explained why in book titles and blurbs are rewritten, not translated.
• Categories and keywords in the store's language. What readers there type, not what you would type. We went into detail in categories and keywords for a translated book.
• An up-to-date author page. Amazon's stores in different countries have a separate author page, and it's worth building one in every country where the book sells. How to do it, we wrote here.
• A cover that fits the market. A book that looks foreign on the digital shelf has a hard fight. Whether you need a new cover, we discussed here.

First reviews

A page with no reviews looks like a book nobody has read. Readers in a foreign country, who don't know you, need a sign that someone already read it and enjoyed it.

You can get the first reviews from afar: advance copies for readers, online reading groups, reader sites like Goodreads. It's important to do this the right way, without buying reviews and without asking friends to review a book they haven't read. It's all explained in how to get reviews for a book in a language you don't read and in what is Goodreads.

Find the readers, not the general public

The common mistake is trying to reach "readers in England." That isn't an audience. It's millions of people, most of whom will never read your book.

The better question: who reads books like mine? If you wrote a memoir about a family that immigrated from Morocco, your readers might be in communities of immigrant families, in groups about the history of North African Jewry, in podcasts about identity. If you wrote a thriller, the readers are in thriller groups and newsletters.

Once you know who they are, you can find where they are online. And there, it makes little difference whether you live in Tel Aviv or London.

A few directions that work from a distance:

• Small podcasts and newsletters. Hosts of a small literary podcast are looking for guests more than you'd think. One interview in a good conversation is worth more than ten posts.
• Reader groups. Not to advertise, but to be part of them. Someone who only shows up to say "buy my book" gets shown the door fast.
• Your own newsletter. Even twenty readers who love the book are a start. These are the people who will buy the next book, and tell their friends.

Someone who speaks the language

If you don't master the language, every text that goes out in your name needs to pass under the eyes of a native speaker. A post, an email to a blogger, a reply to a review.

It doesn't have to be an expensive professional. It can be a reader who loved the book, a translator who worked on it, or a friend who lives there. But they need to be there. A slightly odd sentence in an email to a podcast host looks like spam. We wrote about checking a language you don't read in how to review a translation you can't read.

How long it takes

Longer than you'd like. A translated book starts from zero in a new country: no reviews, no readers, no name. The first months are mostly building.

What helps: don't try everything at once. Pick one country, two or three ways to reach readers, and give them a few months. If you have plans for more books, remember that readers who found one of your books will look for the next, so translating one book or a whole series is a question worth thinking about now.