Thursday, February 20, 2014

Have you tried Babelcube?

Do you want to sell more books? Are you trying to reach a larger market? Would your books sell more copies in foreign markets if you had them translated into that language?

Babelcube could be the answer to all of these questions, and the great thing is - It's free!

Babelcube connects writers with translators. It's easy to use. Just post your profile, upload information about your books, and wait for independent translators to contact you. For authors, there's no cost up front. Babelcube handles all of the details and splits the profits between you, the translator, and of course, a small cut for the house.

Commissions are based on how much revenue your books take in. Babelcube receives 15% for brokering the deal. Your split ranges from 30% to 75% depending on how many copies your book sells and the revenue generated. You receive 30% of revenues for sales under $2,000, and 75% for sales over $8,000. Similar to Amazon, they pay sixty days after sales are made. One caveat, your payment needs to be $50.00 or greater to receive a payment for the month.To view the complete royalty schedule, click here.

They currently offer translation services into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese. 

I uploaded my profiles today and posted five books that I would like to see translated. Within twelve hours I inked deals to have four of my eBay books translated into Spanish by two different translators. Three of the projects will be ready to sell in twenty days, the final one will be ready in thirty days.

I will keep you updated on how things progress.

6 comments:

  1. Hi, I just read this and found it interesting, therefore looked for an update on your experience with Babelcube and found no other entries on your blog. Has everything gone ok? Did the translators lived up to the task? Where your sales in Spanish any good? Man, you left me hanging in here worse than any good cliffhanger has ever done it.

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  2. Great question Juan. I'm still on the line about Babelcube. I have two books published now, and two more in the works.

    One of the translators who was working on three of my books just disappeared from sight. I finally got Babelcube to contact him, and they informed me he was sick and they had no idea when he would resume work on my manuscripts. We eventually cancelled those projects.

    Of the two projects I have in the works right now, one is running four days late (so far) for delivery of the final project; the other one is supposed to deliver the first ten pages today . We'll see how that goes. To be fair the girls who's running late on delivering the final manuscript, did contact me and tell me she was having troubles and would be finished by the 10th.

    The two books that were published are available in the iStore, Barnes & Noble, and other sites. It took over five weeks to get them published. That was my fault, I guess. I was supposed to go back into Babelcube, upload the new cover, and press publish. Only problem is - there are no instructions anywhere on the website about what you are supposed to do. As a result, it makes it a more of a guessing game.

    Unlike most self-publishing sites that are intuitive and easy to use, Babelcube is a struggle everystep of the way (or at least it is to me).

    To answer your final questions about how sales are doing. I have no idea. Babelcube doesn't provide any sales updates or royalty reports, so it is impossible to know if or how well your books are selling.

    Another problem I experienced was all of the offers I received were to translate my books into Spanish, Portugese, and Italian. I was hoping to receive some offers for translations into German and Japanese, too.

    With all of that said, I would still give Babelcube a shot. It's a chance to sell in another market. The only cost to you is to provide a new book cover, so the risk is minimal.

    I hope that helps.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your very thorough answer. I'm considering using it both as an author and as a translator so everything you said to me is really helpful.

      I hope you get some more tangible results and rewards as a self published author (in this case a.k.a. money from the translated books hehe).

      My best wishes from Mexico :)

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    2. Hi, Nick. I'm interested in knowing more about Babelcube. It looks like a year and a half ago you'd had one book translated by them, up and running, and another book in the process of being translated. Would you mind giving an update on the progress? Specifically, whether you were satisfied with their service? Thanks very much! My email is candacewilliamsauthor@gmail.com and website www.candacewilliams.net

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    3. Hi, Nick. I'm interested in knowing more about Babelcube. It looks like a year and a half ago you'd had one book translated by them, up and running, and another book in the process of being translated. Would you mind giving an update on the progress? Specifically, whether you were satisfied with their service? Thanks very much! My email is candacewilliamsauthor@gmail.com and website www.candacewilliams.net

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  3. I signed up as a Polish translator on Babelcube, and I had no issues with registering. I offered to translate some books, even though the dropdown menu doesn't allow any target language other than English to be selected. The small script by book description says that the book is available to be translated into ANY language. I emailed the tech support and I was told that they have no plans to work with Polish in foreseeable future. It is quite disappointing as I translated most of a book before their answer, thinking that the drop down menu was just a glitch. Also most books there are already translated to Spanish and Italian. I hope they add more languages. Does anyone know of another service that works with ALL languages?

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