 Hey, welcome everybody to How to Pitch Publishers, the first session of Alta 43 in between the first virtual translation conference of the American Literary Translators Association. So for everyone who's watching, I have a bit of, I'm Chad Post from Open Letter Books and 3% and various podcasts and other random things. And I'm joined by Kitty Winnemore today, who is a translator from the Spanish, has done a number of amazing things, and I'll get to introduce her in one second. Right before we, before we get to our, what we're going to do for the event today and to get talking about all of it and all that, I just have a few kind of housekeeping things to read off to you. So first of all, if you are new to Crowdcast, there is a chat feature that you should be able to see, and you can test that out by writing your name and where you're watching from so everybody can know where everybody else is throughout the world. If you have a question for us while we're talking, use the ask a question feature that's at the bottom of your screen, where you can also upvote questions that people have already asked at the, after a half hour of talking, we'll open it up to Q&A. And Kelsey will read the questions in order of how many votes they've gotten. So if there's something you really want to hear about, be sure and upvote it, but also feel free to add any and all questions you might have. We really want this to be something that's helpful for you guys and to do, to give you a lot of ammunition to be able to pitch with a lot of confidence and success later during the conference. Now, in addition to the on-screen captions, you can click the green button below the presenter to see a transcript of the conversation. I've never done that. I don't know what that looks like. I can't see it. So, OK, cool. Also, if you are on social media, use the hashtag, hashtag Alta43 to share this event and invite friends to join the conference. And if you like what you see today or on any day or just like Alta generally, you should click on that donate bottom at the bottom of the screen to help ensure that Alta could continue providing similar content to this in the future. Also, you should definitely check out the full schedule for Alta43's conference and register at www.literatranslitters.org. I'll remind you of that at the end, but you should, if you haven't done that already, definitely do it. There's a lot of great stuff coming up over the next month and a half, basically. Also, and what directly ties into this particular panel is that Alta is running pitch sessions where you can use the skills that you learned today to pitch to editors from a variety of presses. But in order to take part in this, you have to register at the $125 or $200 levels by August 31st. Now, I know a lot of people have because Alta has been reaching out to additional editors to bring more people into the pitch sessions. But if you haven't done this, it's a wonderful opportunity. After today, you're going to feel like you know exactly what you should do and exactly how to do it. And so you should definitely sign up immediately following our program. So as I said, I'm Chad's host. I'm joined by Katie Wittemore. Katie is the translator of a recent book four by four by Sarah Mesa, which open letter published. Sorry, guys, which is her first full-length. It's upside down. Which is there. She's also translating the world's best mother for world editions, the communist daughter for Tinder Press in the UK, a number of other authors that she's working on. And I'll turn it over to you, Katie, to say maybe a few things about how you got started into the translation world into pitching, but also to go over what we think the goals are for this session and why we decided to set this up in the first place. Since this is your brainchild. Yes. Thank you. Everyone can blame me. So I've been translating for just two years now. And I came to translation, not late in life, but in my later 30s after I had some other jobs and career directions and starting my family. And I have been really active and proactive in trying to find projects that I connect with and meet authors and talk to agents and basically just start to move things that I feel personally really connected to and passionate about. And so last year at the Alta conference in Rochester, I was volunteering at the pitch sessions, the five minute pitch session events and had a chance to talk with a lot of translators who had signed up and also just sort of like observe the general atmosphere and mood of that, of the people who were partaking in those in that opportunity. And basically the idea for this sort of like therapy or help session, orientation session, was to help get people prepared sort of specifically for pitching editors at Alta, either in person in a future conference or in this year's virtual conference. But also we wanted to break that out and give some good general advice for how to pitch projects in general. So our overall goals for the session today are to make sure that people have a pretty good sense of what they should be submitting for materials when they make a pitch and a submission to a press. Also to get a better understanding from a publisher's perspective. So Chad will be able to offer that from what they see on the other side, right? And to try to, I guess, demystify the process a little bit and help people feel more confident when they're going to be talking with an editor one-on-one, but also more generally just in terms of getting your project ready to share with sort of other people who are dating keepers really for better or worse. I just want to point out that like I said, I'm an emerging translator. I've only had one book length translation published. I have two more coming out soon. And I have quite a few projects lined up. But I'm really at the beginning of my career. And I know there are probably people out there in the audience who have lots more experience pitching and lots more expertise than I do. But I hope to bring today just sort of like a sense of confidence about getting started. I think a lot of people feel nervous about even making that first contact with an editor or a publisher. So I'm hoping that today we can get people's mojo going and ready to start sharing our work. So hopefully, Lizzie, if you haven't done this, if you could share it in the chat, we put together a packet of materials for everyone that included sort of an outline of what we wanted to cover, which I'll go over in a second. And along with a couple cover letters that we received here at Open Letter that we thought were like useful and good sort of templates to use. And a few readers' reports that I will point out might have ways of improvement, but are also good sort of templates for you to use to look at. But what we wanted to do was go over a couple main topics like how to do a cover letter, a readers' report, what your sample should contain, what it's like to do an in-person pitch, how to follow up with the editors, and then some miscellaneous random stuff that we wanted to throw in there. So we'll go over all five of those five, six, I don't know, I can't count anymore. It's open times. But whatever number of things we're going to go over, we'll go over them bit by bit. And then you can ask any questions you want about any of those or anything else as we go along. So, Katie, I think we're going to start with cover letters and what a cover letter should contain. Do you want to start with this or do you want me to give you our rundown? I think that you, I think this is a perfect opportunity for us to better understand a publisher's perspective. A publisher's perspective. I was going to try and take a warning. I'm in our office not supposed to be here. So don't let anyone. Don't at the U of R at this moment, please. But I'm in our office and I was going to show you guys the stacks of submissions that we get. But it's not that easy to do at this moment. So I'm not going to do that. But I'm going to go through that. And then I think of the publisher's perspective. One of the things that you guys should keep in mind, and I'm sure everyone knows this, is that we get a lot of submissions. Open letters is a very small press. We do 10 books a year, which makes us one of the 10 largest publishers of translations in the United States. But we are a very small press in, in, in regards to most other people. And we still receive dozens and dozens of, of submissions every month. to publish. And a cover letter is one of the ways that obviously is your first kind of touch with the publisher. And for from a very big broad perspective, the cover letter is a thing that's going to get us to open up your attachments, first and foremost. And the cover letter doesn't have to be obviously a formal letter that you mail in, but can be an email. But when email with attachments, it can be the email that you submit to submitable, that sort of goes over what your project is. And it has, we asked you to include a sample and various other things. But it's that sort of introduction. And for me, the things I tell my students and the trends that as I work with that matter most to me, the number one thing is that there has to be some sort of hook that gets me to want to read your submission now. It's very easy. And this is no fault. I want to reiterate this, I'm going to reiterate this probably like 42 times. So bear with me. But if we reject your manuscript or reject your submission, or, or I say something like, Oh, I didn't read that yet. It is nothing to do with you personally as a translator or the quality of anything involved. It's just a sheer, there's so much information and trying to decide where to put your attention becomes triggered by different like things. If there's a book that seems so that the thing that I want to convey this or say that for is that in your cover letter, if there's a way to convey that this is an essential important book that you should act on immediately for whatever reasons that might be, then I'm probably going to open it up and I'm probably going to respond. So cover letters should be short, direct, very, like devoid of a lot of like rhetorical flourishes, but just giving you what this is, what this book is, and why now? Why should this be published now? It's a common trap to fall into for a lot of, especially a lot of people who haven't done this a ton of times to sort of be like, Well, this is a great book. So it deserves to be published. And that's, that's wonderful. Like that's admirable. I love that I support that fully. But I also know that the real realistic thing is that it costs us about $36,000 to publish a book in translation. And then we have to earn that money back through grants or sales. If it sales, that means we're selling like 17,000 copies of a book. So there is like a business business part to this, but just the idea that we have to spend $36,000. Why this book, why now is the questions that you want to answer. So we put together a little quick hit list of like, of things to include in the, in the cover letter, including that direct thing, the hook, the information about the rights, if you have them, which you should definitely have. And then the one that people generally don't include that I think is very useful, especially if you're pitching to a larger publisher, is if the books rights have been sold into other countries. Chad, can I just point out, I just want to clarify that, that translator should include information about the availability of rights. You have to have that information. You don't have to have the rights. Right. So the way that you said it, just want to make sure that for anybody who's really new. And that's going to involve for the most part, contact with the author, him or herself, or their agent, most likely. So, so getting used to, or their publisher, the original language publisher. Yeah. Yes, and absolutely do do that. That's worth like, that's actually worth like nailing down one more time or doubling down on is that you as a translator do not have to acquire the rights to anything, but you should before you start working on a project, check in with the rights holder to make sure that the rights are available. In part because you don't want to go through a process of translating an entire book to find out that somebody else is already doing it and it's been sold. And you don't want to pitch that book to me and have me be like, Oh, this is great. I want to do this. And then we contact the rights holder and find out that the book has been sold. We've always had our time. So we don't want to do that. So yeah. Sorry, I didn't make that completely clear. Thank you, Katie. That's perfect. Is there anything else that you want to add for what you. So we had a couple of cover letters in here, one of them related to the rights thing I deleted from here, but they included an email from the rights holder stating that the rights are still available as of X date. It's nice to include, but it's not necessary. I did. I think that that's something to point out, especially for people who are submitting stories or who are submitting short pieces to magazines or journals, you will often be asked for a statement from the rights holder that the rights are available. So I just always made sure that I had an email from the author or and or the agent just sort of like on file when I was especially when I was submitting to magazines and journals. What about with your cover letters? What kind of tone do you like to use in your cover letters? My cover letters? Well, I need to learn from I'm going to be learning from today. I think from the cover letters, I usually do try to keep them really brief because as we're going to see in in the next in the next step, the attached materials is where like the bulk of the information is going to be. But again, it's that question of sort of wetting the appetite of the editor and making them feel like it's pressing that this book is an exciting, you know, opportunity for them, not that you're like coming with your, you know, hot in hand trying to, you know, beg someone to read your work, but trying to portray confidence in the book, in your own abilities in this author and in its importance for the moment, I think is really is really critical. And I'll just make a small little addition there. I think that as translators, we need to feel very confident in our own ability to talk about why we want to do a project. So this will come across in your cover letter and in your readers report, sort of, you know, not a conversational tone, but not too stiff. I mean, you need to be able to portray why do you want to spend X number of hours and days and even, you know, years for some books pursuing this project. And that sort of enthusiasm and honesty and authenticity will hopefully make its way to the editor or the publisher that's taking that's taking a look at the submission. So don't it's not the time to like, you know, you want to be professional, but don't tone, you know, your own passion and interest down so much that it just reads like cardboard or like academia because unless you're pitching, you know, an academic book. But if you're going for, you know, fiction or creative nonfiction or poetry, I mean, really get across your own perspective on why this matters. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Enthusiasm is key. We'll move on in a second. I asked our one of our interns has been working with our submitable account all summer, helping read through all the submissions that have come in. I asked her what stood out to her this morning during our meeting on the cover letters. And she said that one thing that always jumped out at her was the number of the cover letters that included references to books that we had published or authors that were similar to open letter authors that contextualized the book that was being pitched that that was really good. And this is a good important thing that's easy to lose track of. But you want your book to be part of a console, a publisher's constellation of their backlist. You want that that book to join these other authors that they've already worked on and published. And so to be able to tie in where those threads are is really key. And we'll get an editor more like we'll make an editor more likely to read your additional materials, because they have a sense that it ties in there. She said that was a real key one for her that jumped out. And I think that that's something worth definitely worth emphasizing. So I've received numerous things that are like, just not as clear that they that people have just sent them. Like we usually get books written in English that are kids books. And you're like, oh, I don't think you've even seen our website. So so be sure and so know the press. Yeah. I mean, really, you know, try to tailor your materials as well and know the press and double check and make sure that you haven't cut and paste cut and paste something with the name of like another editor and another press. Because I think that can happen to double checking. And there's nothing like an editor's ego. Yeah, exactly. So the cover letter generally, some cover letters, like the ones that we've included in here are kind of mixtures between a cover letter plus a little bit of a readers report. But generally, they should be kind of separate entities. Now readers report is a formal document that a lot of presses produce in house for in house consumption only. It serves as I tell my students every year, serves two purposes. One is to get a semi objective view of the book itself that's under consideration so that you can decide whether you want to take the next step with it, be that reading the sample, be that getting another readers report, be that acquiring the rights, whatever that or rejecting it saying, no, this is great, but it's like not for us. Because again, I just I thought of this too, whereas you're talking Katie, but when we're talking when we're pitching something for a publisher to sign on a book, it's that $36,000 plus two years. It's a two year a two year relationship of working with the translation, the production, the marketing and all of that. So it's a it's a it's a time thing too. So that's kind of what you're what you're engaging with and what the goal is. So for the readers report, one is one objective is that the second objective though, which is not to be overlooked is that this tends to be the first piece of information that leads to the marketing of the book. How do we talk about this book? I have I have presented books in the New York Times that I have read not a wordy, but I had a readers report that I was able to like convince them that I knew this book well enough that they've reviewed it even though we hadn't even received the translation yet. So the readers report does serve a few functions other than just being a what's the word I'm looking for? Not a propaganda, but like a something that convinces you is that just supposed to convince you also provides a sort of backdrop. Katie, why don't you talk about the way that you've done your readers reports and then I can quickly give you guys a summary of what I teach the students. Okay, I do want to point out too, in my case, I've had jacket copy sort of lifted and crafted using my readers reports and other materials as well. So yeah, so that definitely I've seen that come through. Even a subtitle just recently came through. Too, that relates to that. I prefer if you guys can send a readers report like when you have for the books, because it's very helpful for us, even if I know that it's biased because you want to probably translate the book. But you will also be asked sometimes, especially if a publisher has a book that they're looking into and they don't have a translator signed to it, they might ask you to do a readers report. And that can be it's almost sort of a quasi edition. The sample itself is the edition, but this is part of it of getting a sense of what your feel is for that book, because your feel for the voice and for the tone and the texture of a book is what helps make a publisher want to choose to work with you as a translator. And I can also add that for, you know, another way of kind of getting more skilled at doing readers reports and getting them to be, you know, a bit easier to tackle is I've worked with quite a few Spanish agents and done readers reports for them that then they've used to try to sell the rights internationally, either to anglophone publishers or also to other countries using an English language readers report. So that's another thing that can be a way to sometimes you make a little money on the side or sometimes you just do it because you want to have great connections. And I think that's all valuable. But for me, with the readers reports, I include, you know, at the top, I'll include information about the book, the basics, you know, the title, the author, the year and the press publication. I include the page numbers or if I have a word count, a word count, because it helps the publishers to kind of get their mind around how much this might cost. But also just to have a sense of what's the scope of the book, you know, are we talking about a novella? Are we talking about a tone? And then I always include the information about the rights contact. So that's usually the agents. I usually put the agent's name and email and phone number. And then I'll do a very brief bio, really brief, just kind of like a couple of lines for the author. I will do, again, a bare bones summary, like just pretty much a plot summary. And then I usually go into, and I make maybe some, maybe many of you out there, I had a background in English. And so I kind of really do approach it as a, as almost as if I were going to be writing a paper, like I will do a bit of an analysis of the work. And that will, you know, come, I guess what comes into play there are, you know, sort of its themes, other works, you might be able to connect it to the tradition that it might may or may not fall in. What else do I do? And then I really try to talk about, like why, and I do have a section for why, you know, why translate this book, why this book. And I tend to be in that section pretty passionate, not overblown, like we've all seen, you know, people really trying to oversell a book and this is not a knock against agents. I think, you know, agents do what they do because that's, that's their function in this, in this field of translation work. But, but like, you can't just say everything is like the most brilliant or like the most groundbreaking. I mean, you have to talk honestly about about sometimes even a little bit about the shortcomings or pretend I've always tried to identify potential difficulties with the translation, like to show that I'm thinking ahead about what might be some of the challenges of this work and how might I deal with them. So that's kind of how I approach it. A hundred years ago, Jordan Stump told me that he, we had him do a readers report on a book and he wouldn't translate it because he said it was a book that he really respected but could never get that tone of voice down that he couldn't write. And that's a people who know what their limitations are in that sense are like, they makes it more valuable makes their, their, their yeses more valuable, their, the way that I tell my students to break it down into three sections is similar to what you said, where section one is always just a quick bio. Did this book win awards? Is it the fifth book by the author of their first book? You know, where are they in their career? Where's this book been in their career? And then like a two to three sentence synopsis is a book about two. There's a love story between this person fighting in France and woman back and whatever. And then the second part is the longer part and is what you're talking about. And the section that I'm not sure if you mentioned this, but you say how it's told this frequently, the thing that you use is the style. I get them to talk style. I don't care at that point about the plot itself. We're not, I mean, for a different sort of book, if you're doing like a thriller for like a bitter lemon or for Soho, yeah, the plot probably does matter a little bit more because that is those books are functions of plot. Whereas the books that we're looking for are functions of structure and of voice and of character construction. And so I'm much more interested in the style of writing and what makes that all unique. What I want out of a reader's report is to be able to walk away from reading it and say, I know what makes this book a unique book in the world of literature. And why then, and that's what I want. Like I don't, I don't know about other publishers, but I want to do things that are, are, you know, new or not new necessarily as in like nobody's, this is experimental and nobody's seen this, but are doing something that is unique and bringing something that's a unique perspective through all the different ways that literature can do that as a medium. And a readers report can really help hone that and make it clear like, this is something that is special. What is special about this book? And that can come through in the style. And then the third part I tell them is like, why this book, why should this be published or in the case of my students, they're like evaluating it. So it might be like, why not? Like, this is great. This book is great, but it's not, it's not going to do super well. And maybe it's too long. Somebody else should probably publish it. It's not for you guys. That kind of thing is possible too. But, you know, that's, that's if you're being asked to write as a reader's report, not if you're sending in as the mission, obviously. Anything else with readers reports or should we move on to the sample? Let's move on to the sample. Yes, because we are getting close. Doing good. So the sample we said should be about 20 to 30 pages is ideal. Depending on the length of the book, obviously, we had a, we got a submission for a 1000 page book of which the submission was 265 pages long. That's a commitment. So that's, that's, yeah, that's, that's a lot. But you know, normal book, 20, 30 pages is great. We did mention, and this is something that you've asked about a lot before, Katie, is like, where should this be from? And I know that some publishers prefer to get the beginning of the book because that's what's going to capture someone. And I think it would include the very beginning, at least a few pages of, but I'm also of the feeling that a book can, you can see what makes a book work from anywhere inside the book. And that there are books that have beginnings that are great and endings that are bad, and that there are ways that they're, they're, they're things that they're parts that are really stand out. So it could be from anywhere. But one thing that's important is to provide a context for where this is coming from, even if that's inserting a paragraph of your own saying what's happened, what's happened. Here it is. The other thing, and I know you've, you, I'll let you talk to this, but you've done books that have multiple voices like four by four, for example. Do you want to talk a bit about that for a second about how to deal with books that are so buried? Yes, I mean, a couple of the books that I'm doing have either multiple narrators or narrative perspectives. And with the different voices, like with four by four in that sample, I did, I probably did 10 pages, it's in three sections. So I probably did 10 or 15 pages from the beginning section, 10, the beginning of the second voice, and then the beginning of the third part as well to show, to show, you know, the change in the voice. For another book that I did a sample for it, some, there was first person voice and there was also third person. So I did chapters in both of, in both of those, both of those voices. I tend like I, my inclination is always to do like the first chapter or two, but then to also try to go through and pick some critical chapters from either from the middle and also toward the end. I like to, I like to try to show the evolution of the book. And I've had that be very well received. And I've also had people tell me that they prefer not to have things jumping around and that they would prefer to have the whole sample from, you know, page one until page, you know, 40, I don't know. So I guess it depends a little bit on if you know, if there's a book that, you know, if you happen to, the other thing, I don't know, I just, this is coming to me now. I mean, if you don't know, if you have, if you've started and say you've gotten a pretty good chunk done from the beginning, you know, you might, if you might even reach out to an editor and find out, say, I have pages X, you know, to X done, would you be interested in general, just in general, you know, not saying, and who knows if you'll get an email back, but you kind of start to learn, I think, too, like the more that you do this, you start to get a sense of what different people tend to like. And if you have the opportunity to talk with editors one on one at an altar conference, for example, or bread loaf, which is where I met quite a few editors as well, the bread loaf translators conference, you know, then you have, you can sort of connect with people one on one later to find out preferences as well, how you might be most successful with a submission with that particular person. Yeah. And this is something that you can include in your cover letter as well, say, like, I have attached our pages X through Y, I'm also happy to do something from this section or this voice, if you'd prefer to hear that, which is good. So let's talk for a few minutes before we get to the Q&A about in-person pitching. So you guys have five minutes at Alta to make your presentation. So that is not a lot of time. I think to some people it might seem like a lot of time, like if you're nervous, but once you sit down and start talking five minutes goes by fast. Like the time that we've been talking already has been much longer than I would have guessed it would have been. So you need to be sort of prepared, but be ready to just like lay it out there. Don't let yourself be nervous. My advice for everyone is to stick to the high points. Don't get stuck in talking about the importance of the author historically within one particular niche or even about your translation work within that. Try and like hit the high notes and give me something to like engage with and interact with so that can follow up. So give me like information about what the book, the author is and really make me feel like it's compelling and essential right now. And if you can do that, that's great. But anything that you can offer up so I can start asking you questions about the book will be very helpful. Chad, this is to put, I don't know, I don't want to put you in the spot, but is there any, can you give us any sort of sense of like, how do we trans, how do we transmit to you that's something that we think something's really essential? I mean, are there certain like phrases that might be helpful or like you don't want us to ramble? How do we bring it in? Like when you talk about that, what does that actually sound like? So that's a really good question. And I don't know that there's a specific phrases that can give you. But if you start to latch, there's ways in which people talk about a book where like this is hitting you tied into current literary movements, current social movements, current like events of as a why this book would right now make sense. This comes into play a lot more. So if you're doing a book by an author that came out a book that came out last year, and you're presenting that to me, that's one thing. You're pitching it as like, this is a young author from wherever from Cuba, from Estonia, they have this new book that's getting a lot of reviews, it's getting a lot of attention worldwide. That's one sort of presentation. And that's good. And that the sales part of that and the sort of worldwide attention part of that, that's important. If you're doing something that's from before, it's why now, why didn't this get translated in 2008? Why should it be translated in 20 or 1945 or whatever, or 19. Yeah. And and we all know that there's great books that just got overlooked because the industry is what it is and the market is what it is. But then you can, it's one thing to be like, yeah, it's an old book that's good, but that maybe that book would be better coming out in 2030 than 2021. But if it ties into something that's going on now that relates to what's happening within the the world of aesthetics, not to use a pretentious term, but within like what what's what's appealing to people, what works also what how it ties into our press. Like if you can make it seem essentially like you did Macedonia Fernandez, this book is the next that and explain it like, oh, shit, you're right, this is a book that we should definitely be paying attention to. But a lot of it is being engaging, being like being friendly, like it's something that gets overrated a bit or underrated a bit, like you having this is all like a personal relationship that happens between editors, authors, translators, and being personal and being like friendly and engaging and offering up the information and answering the questions that we might have. That's all very, very, very meaningful. So approaching it more as like as a conversation about a book that you love, as if you were talking to somebody like at a cocktail party as opposed to like sitting down and you're like, you know, like making a big marketing pitch, you know, like, I think that I think that the best thing my personal advice would be to to go sort of, it's easy to say go and relax, be as relaxed as possible. But really, if you think about it as it's your chance to talk about a book, obviously you care about this project, obviously it matters to you. So it's your chance to talk to somebody you have a captive audience who's going who who makes his or her living working on translations. I mean, it's a very exciting opportunity to have a chance to talk to someone about something that you love. And so approaching it that way and hitting those high points and sort of having having something prepared that you want to say, but not being not being worried about being too stiff or too formal and think of it really as a chance to engage with someone who by virtue of their profession is interested in in what you have to say. Like your I think it's something else that's really important that I want to just touch on really quick and I know that we need to move to questions too. But I think a lot of times translators feel very nervous. We feel anxious. We have imposter syndrome. We don't know if our if our if our work is any good or if you know and sort of like editors and publishers are on this pedestal because they have a lot of power in a sense, right? And we feel like we're going and we're hoping that they'll pay attention. We're hoping they'll give us a chance. They'll give us a break or they'll read our work. But I think we also and while some of that is true, we really have to think about the fact that translators are often the very best sources for the best works that are that are going to come out. I mean, agents, other foreign presses that are going to be sending information around, that's their job. But if a translator comes with a project that they really care about and they can transmit that and they prepared good materials, I think my personal opinion is that and what I've experienced is that publishers and editors are are are likely to listen if you are authentically engaging with them about something that you think is valuable. Yeah, I want to turn over to Q&A, but I want to say one last piece of advice related to that is that I don't think of it as that you're pitching one project and it's your one shot and that's the beginning of a conversation. It's even if you've known the trend, the author or the editor for a while, it's still part of a conversation. So you Katie might bring to me a book and be like, I'm really excited about this. I like it for this reason. Here's my sample and my readers report. I'll be like, yeah, that's not really our sort of thing, but like, you know, what, and you'll be like, oh, yeah, that maybe that doesn't fit open letter, but I have this, I know about this other person, like we continue to look and I get to know who you are as a reader and as a translator and what types of books you're finding that might fit for us. So whereas like the beginning of a conversation, we're all pretty isolated in this industry, especially within translation, and especially because translation presses aren't centralized the way that big five are. So we're all in different parts of the world. So we like to have these conversations and these connections where people are acting as a network and giving us an information advice, as long as it and the best thing is to keep in mind that the rejections are not personal. That the that it is, it isn't it isn't like you're you have bad taste if I don't want to do this book. It's this isn't the right book for this particular situation, but you have might have something else that that will work out in the future. So let's open up the questions. Kelsey, take it over. Hi everyone. I hope you can hear me okay. I'm Kelsey Veneta Alta's program manager, and I am reading your questions in Crowdcast to Chad and Katie. There's a lot of great questions here. We really just have about 10 minutes or less for Q&A. So we'll get through as many as we can. Your first question here is about simultaneous pitching. When one editor's interested and wants to start the contract process, what's the etiquette for notifying the other editors? Is it better to give them a chance to express their interest or just move forward with the first editor and apologize to any others who might express their interest weeks or months later? We put this in the in one of these bits. I forget where it is. Oh, be forthright about multiple submissions. If you're submitting to multiple presses, tell me up front. I'm good with that. If I know it. And then if you say somebody's interested in this, if you as a translator know, if you let me know and just say, you know, this other person's interested, that I appreciate. If you're already, if they're like this other person's already made an offer, that's a different situation. And that's kind of out of your realm at that point in time. Just so you know, from the back side of things, if a publisher makes an offer through an agent, the agent will then go to everyone else who might have had that book and try and drum up a larger offer. It's like trying to have like a mini auction. And that's what agents do. As a translator, that's not necessarily your role. As long as you're saying like up front, hey, Chad, you know, I'm sending this to you, but I'm also sending it to deep bellum, two lines and new directions. I'll be like, cool. And maybe that might, I might be like, well, you know, it seems more like a new directions book than an open letter one. So I'm not going to worry too much about it. Or it could be like, oh, shit, I really want this book before those of you. But if you, if you know about something, being forthright and honest about it is really helpful. Nobody likes being like kind of feeling like they got screwed over and especially, especially in situations like this. Next question is, can you please talk about the timing between pitching to publishers and getting permission to translate from the author? Yeah. I think, you know, you don't, you don't necessarily need permission from the author to translate or certainly not to do a sample. I use, I almost always reach out first to, sometimes I reach out to the author first if I, if they're kind of easy to find, like on social media or if I happen to know someone who knows them. But I often will start with the, if I know that they have an agent, you know, I can find that by Googling. And I'll usually start with the agent just to get a sense of where they're at. I can also find out that way if there are other translators who are already actively working on that author with samples and either choose to do my own or choose to reach out to those translators and talk about collaborating or say, wow, five people are already working on a sample for this book. I'm going to, you know, start looking for something else. So I think you want to know the right status and just have kind of the lay of the land before you dive into a project, make the sample and then be pitching it. But you don't have to have permission from the author because in the end, the editor at the, at the US or the UK or the other press is going to make the decision on who translates the book. I mean, having contact with the author is good, but it's not a prerequisite to be able to pitch a project. Knowing that the rights are available at the publisher is interesting, can, can then knows where to inquire and isn't surprised that they've been sold years ago is very but yeah, there is also to make this, to add a little layer of complication, but to give you guys a broader perspective, there are times where like we want to publish a book and the author slash agent reject our offer. And so you come to us like this happened very recently where we made an offer for a book and the, and the publishers like, no, we don't want you to do this. We want a different book by this author to come out first. So we won't sell you the rights and there's nothing you could have done as a translator in that situation. And it's how this, this, this business that we're all in is a little bit weird because you control a certain amount of it, but you don't control. There's another part he's involved. Well, and that's actually that brings up another really good point, which is an unpleasant point, but it's also really important to know, which is that you might bring an author or a book to a press, they might love the book and be interested in it and not choose you as the translator. I mean, you can, so that, that can also happen. So just being aware, I mean, there's really, you know, that's just where the cookie crumbles. But that, I think probably, you know, translators who have been in the business for a long time will have seen a little bit of all of this. And you know that like you're going to win some, you're going to lose some, but to keep, you know, to keep your name out there and to keep your projects moving and, and to not try to, I guess to try not to take anything too personally. Yeah. Here's another question. Are translators increasingly advocates for the writers they translate? And how important is a social media presence in getting the word out there? Also, which social media outlets would you suggest and how active do translators need to be on social media? I'll answer the first half of this and let you have, I don't know, and you can do the second. You're going to let me have the social media part? Yeah, I'll give you the social media. Let me give you the first one. The first one is, you know what, I don't think that translators are bigger advocates now than they were 10 years ago. I think that this has been the case for a while. I think you're being recognized and being lauded for this and given accolades for the work that you've been doing for a long time in this, this particular space within the publishing ecosystem. Yes, it's very important, especially for smaller presses, that the translators are advocating and bringing books to them. The big presses deal a lot with the big books that have like, they're being sold to 12, 20 different countries. They have auctions. We got involved in one of these dumb auctions where they ended up selling it for like $150,000 and our offer was like $3,500. It's just different scales. But that book didn't come from a translator. That came from the agent on down. For presses that are of the small independent nonprofit variety, which are doing most of these translations, we're working a lot with individuals. We're doing this for individuals. None of us are going to be retiring to the Cayman Islands on our nonprofit but editorial salaries. We do it because we love the books and the people and the conversations that come up around it. We love working with you and that's very important. Social media thing, Katie, all yours. I'm done with social media. Well, I'm not really on it. Sometimes I get like Twitter translator envy where I think that I should be on Twitter and that I should be like, you know, tweeting translation-related things and retweeting. But I'm not. However, I do know from Twitter stalking, not stalking, but Twitter lurking, they call it, that there is an active translator presence, which I think is great. I'm on Instagram and sometimes I'll post pictures of books that I'm working on or news or things like that, but it's also just like a lot of things of my kids in our life in Spain. So I don't know how important that is for promotion of a book or your own identity. I can give you two. I'll give you guys two. I'm pretty much done with all of social media for as much as I possibly can for the time being anyways. But in terms of like having done it for a long time and worked with people, the most important thing is that you are you on there and yet you're not selling something. Don't be selling something. The second thing is that Instagram is the best for book publishers, but I think Twitter is the best for translators. And I think in Twitter, it's very easy to find the group of like, it's probably like 30, maybe not even that, booksellers and like translation nerds that are out there that are all like constantly retweeting each other and talking to each other about these different books. Being part of that group of people is not a bad thing at all. And that is something that is helps sell your book, it helps sell your name. But it's just being part of that conversation because they're always every day they're talking about a new translation or new book. So that is useful, but I wouldn't put too much emphasis on it because I think that social media needs to be de-emphasized in our culture to a large extent because it is causing us to be disconnected from each other. But that's a personal hobby horse. Okay, next question. All right. And actually, this is going to be your last question. I think it's an interesting one to end on. You have a question here from someone who says, hello, everyone, I'm very new to the translation field. And I was wondering what some of the biggest mistakes you've seen made when pitching to a publisher would be. Can you speak to that a little bit? I'll tell you one. Someone who didn't tell us the name of the author. It's like, it's like such a dumb thing, but it's so easy to do like to like just skip by like the essential information. That's not really a mistake. That's just something for like, for like, when we talk about putting in bibliographic information, you know, just include everything that you can because it's you either get nervous or you're writing things. And it's and you think everyone knows what you're saying. And suddenly the person reading is like, I'm not sure what this is. The other biggest mistake, the number one thing to say is to look into who you're pitching to just know a bit about them. Yeah. I would add one thing, which is to also know when it's time to take a break from a project that you are actively trying to shop around. So, you know, people, many people have been in the position where there's something that you love. It's like your passion project. You think it's really important and you've had it in front of many eyes and it's just not getting picked up. So, at that point, sometimes the best thing to do is to put it aside, I think, and come back to it at another point and bring something new to the table. So, that's, I think that's a little bit more like, you know, amorphous. That's for lack of a better word, but thinking about like the idea that sometimes we have to know when to stop with a particular project or when to take a pause and come back to editors or publishers with something new. And I think that a mistake can be for new people becoming way too attached to one particular book, one particular sample. You know, it's sort of like you want to kind of diversify and have different things going that you can send out to different presses. Always really knowing when, you know, who the appropriate editor or press might be for a particular project and trying to, trying to, you know, set people up where they need to be. I believe you just explained the game theory of translation pitching. Wow. Who knew? There you go. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. No. No. Not with a press and not with a project. Kelsey, are we able to like save the questions that we didn't get to and could Chad and I maybe answer them and get them sent out somehow? Writing? We can do that. Yeah. All the questions will stay here in the Crowdcast event so we can capture them later. Thanks for answering the ones we did get to. Why don't you save them, send them to us and we'll just record ourselves answering them and you can post it as an additional thing. Sounds great. Thank you so much. Yeah, no problem. Thanks everyone. Yeah, thanks everyone. Oh, register for ALTA 43, especially by August 31st because then you'll have the chance at the $125 or $200 levels to not only have a pitch session with an editor, but you'll also get a chance to participate in a workshop. Where do they go to sign up if they want to register for ALTA 43, Katie? I don't know. You have that sheet. I just stepped on your toes and stir your final thunder. Literary translators.org and you can find the full schedule and register for the full conference there. And donate if you like what you