There are millions of readers out there who will never buy your book, for one simple reason: they don’t read English.
When you first realize that, translation sounds like an obvious win. Your book already exists. Why not open it up to whole new markets of readers in Spanish, German, French, or Portuguese, and multiply your sales? Simple!
I understand the appeal, and translation is a real option that most authors don’t think about. But before you invest in it, I want to be honest with you about what it actually takes, because I’ve done this myself, and it hasn’t always gone the way I hoped. North Downs Publishing also offers translation services, and I’ve seen which types of books tend to do well with translations and which ones don’t.
My experience with translation
I’ve had a few of my own books translated into Spanish. I speak the language, I believed in the books, and I was excited about reaching a whole new audience. For over two decades, I spoke Spanish at home, which means it was a really important language for me.
The reality: they never took off.
I want to lead with that, because you’ll read plenty of advice online that treats translation as easy money. In my experience, it isn’t. Looking back, I understand why my translations didn’t work, and the reason has very little to do with the translations themselves. It has everything to do with what came after (or didn’t). I’ll come back to that, because it’s the most important part of this whole conversation.
What translating a nonfiction book really involves
First, let’s clear up the biggest misconception: translation is not running your book through free AI translation software and uploading the result to KDP.
Machine translation has come a long way, but it still reads like machine translation, and readers can tell. A book full of stiff, slightly-off phrasing will earn you poor reviews in any language. If you want to go this route, hire someone who knows what they’re doing—and who can do MTPE (machine translation post-editing) to make your book sound human.
Real translation is a craft. It means working with a professional translator who is a native speaker of the target language and can carry your meaning, your tone, and your personality across—or someone who has solid MTPE skills to transform an AI translation into something that works.
For nonfiction, there’s an extra layer: some of your examples, idioms, and cultural references won’t land the same way in another language or country. A good translation often needs a bit of localization or transcreation, which adapts the content so it feels natural to the new reader, rather than just swapping words one for one.
So the translation itself is a real financial investment, and it deserves to be done well. This is the part we can take off your plate. But here’s the thing I most want you to understand.
Translating the book is the easy part
Getting your book translated is the easy part. Marketing it, all over again, in a new language and a new market, is the real work. And it’s the part almost everyone underestimates, myself included.
Think about everything that goes into selling your English book: the keywords, the categories, the description, the reviews, the ads, the ongoing marketing every single week. Now picture doing all of that again, from scratch, in a language and a marketplace you may not know well.
- Your keywords and categories have to be researched fresh for that market.
- Your book description needs to be written as sales copy in the new language, not just translated.
- You need reviews from readers in that language, and you’re starting from zero.
- If you run ads, they need to be set up and managed in that market.
- And someone needs to keep marketing the book, week after week, the way you do with your English edition.
This is exactly where my Spanish translations fell down. I had the books, and I could read and write the language, but I never built an ongoing marketing presence for them. I didn’t have an audience in the Spanish-speaking market. So most of the books just sit there on Amazon, the same way any book sits when nobody is driving readers to it.
A translated book won’t sell itself any more than an English one will—even a bestselling book like If Trees Could Talk, which has sold over 16,000 copies in English. Does it sell in Spanish? Yes, every month it sells a handful of copies. But if I hadn’t done the translation in-house, it certainly wouldn’t have paid off its investment.
For some genres, translation really is the right answer
Everything I’ve said so far comes from my world, which is nonfiction. But I’ve watched translation work beautifully for other authors, and the difference almost always comes down to genre.
A friend of mine writes romance. She’s had her books translated into several languages, and they’re doing really well. They’re actually selling and getting reviews. When I look at why her translations took off, and mine didn’t, it isn’t that she’s a better marketer than me. It’s that she’s playing a completely different game.
Fiction, and romance in particular, has a few things going for it that nonfiction usually doesn’t:
- The global appetite is enormous. Romance readers are voracious. They read fast, they finish a book in a day or two, and they are always looking for the next one, in every language.
- Readers follow the genre, not just the author. A romance reader in Germany or Brazil will happily try a new-to-them author if the book hits the tropes they love. That means you can find readers in a new market without having spent years building a personal platform there.
- Series keep readers buying. When one book leads a reader into a whole series, a single new reader can be worth many sales. That’s what makes the cost of translation pay back.
- The book is the product. Fiction doesn’t lean on coaching, courses, or services that only exist in one language. The story stands on its own, so nothing is lost in the handoff to a new market.
So if you write in a genre with a hungry, global readership, translation can absolutely be the right move if your goal is to sell more books. My honest caution in this post is more about nonfiction, where a book leans so heavily on the author’s platform and on what it leads to. Know which game you’re playing before you decide.
When translating your book is worth it
Translations do sell, as we’ve just seen. And authors who are already well known and who have a big audience can absolutely benefit from reaching new readers with a translation. There have been a few times when I’ve wanted to recommend a book to a friend who doesn’t read English well, and I’ve been so pleased to see it has a Spanish translation available on Amazon. There’s a whole world of people who would prefer to read a book in their native language.
I’m not telling you never to do it. I’m telling you to do it with your eyes open. Translation makes real sense when several of these are true:
- You already have an audience or a business in that language or country. If you have readers, an email list, or clients who speak the target language, you have somewhere to launch the book. This is the single biggest predictor of success.
- You speak the language, or you have a trusted partner who does. Someone needs to be able to write the marketing copy, read the reviews, and engage with readers in that market. If nobody on your side can, it’s very hard to sustain.
- Your topic travels well and is in demand in that market. Some subjects are universal. Others are tied to a specific country’s systems, culture, or context and don’t cross over as cleanly.
- Your book leads somewhere that also works in that language. For nonfiction authors, a lot of a book’s value is in what it leads to: your coaching, courses, or services. If your backend offers are available to that audience, the math improves a lot. If they only exist in English, you lose that advantage.
- You’re treating the translated edition as a brand-new launch, with its own marketing plan, not as a copy you upload and forget. And you have the budget to support this.
When to hold off
On the flip side, I’d think twice about translating if:
- Your English book isn’t selling well yet. If you haven’t cracked marketing in your own language, adding a second one rarely fixes that. It usually just doubles the problem.
- You have no audience, presence, or help in the target market, and no plan to build one.
- You’re hoping translation will be passive income. It won’t be. It’s a second book to market, not a set-and-forget asset.
- Your budget is tight and would be better spent getting your existing book in front of more of the readers you can already reach.
If your book isn’t selling in English yet, that’s the thing to solve first. Translation multiplies whatever you’re already doing, so it multiplies zero just as easily as it multiplies success.
How to give a translated book the best chance
If you’ve read all of that and translation still feels right for you, here’s how to give it the best possible shot:
- Start with a market where you have some foothold, even a small one: readers, contacts, or a business presence in that language.
- Hire a professional translator who is a native speaker and, ideally, understands your subject and genre.
- Localize, don’t just translate. Adapt the examples and references so the book feels written for that reader.
- Plan the launch and the marketing before you commit to the translation, not after. Decide who will keep marketing it, and how.
- Give it the same ongoing attention you give your English book. That’s the piece I skipped, and it’s the piece that matters most.
So, should you translate your book?
Honestly, it depends on what you write and where you’re starting from. If you write in a genre with a hungry global readership and you’re ready to treat it as a real launch, translation can be a wonderful way to sell more books. If you write nonfiction and you don’t yet have an audience to launch into or the capacity to keep marketing in that language, then not yet, and that’s a fine answer.
I’d rather tell you the truth about my own experience than sell you on a dream, because I’ve lived the version where the translation exists and the readers never come.
If you’re weighing this up, let’s talk it through before you spend a penny on it. Book a Discovery Call, and we’ll look at your book, your goals, and whether you have what a translation really needs to succeed. If translation is right for you, we can handle that side for you.
And if I think your money is better spent elsewhere for now, I’ll tell you that, too.
