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Translators and Narrators: The Contact List

Working For Royalty Share (part three)

Using a contact list to sell books
The Contact List –
Translators and Narrators

Why work for commission only?

(intro) (part one) (part two) (part three) (part four)

Contact List

Your contact list is your advantage over the author as a non-English translator or narrator . An ‘English’ author, like myself, may have a dozen contacts in each of several languages, but a thousand in English. A French translator or narrator, for example, will probably have a thousand French contact, but not as many in other languages. It’s normal… it’s obvious. It hardly deserves mentioning.

Family and Friends

So, forget about the author. If he or she is any good, they will do what they can and keep on trying for ever and a day. It is basically up to you. Therefore, promote first to your friends and family and ask them to forward your post to their contact list too. If you are lucky, and you have chosen a good product, your message may travel far (go viral) and you will make money quickly. However, that is not the time to stop. There is never a good time to stop. You have to draw up an advertising plan (promo plan) and stick to it – even if it is only 15-30 minutes a day.

There are techniques and tools, even free ones, that you can use to make your promo job easier, but we’ll look at those later.

You Are The Expert!

Of the three main contributors to the book (author, translator and narrator), you, the translator or narrator, are the expert in your language field. Your contribution (using your language skills to write effective posts and sending them to your contact list) is invaluable. I can do my best, but you can get sales off to a flying start, and once sales have momentum, promotion becomes far easier.

As an aside here, many audiobook listeners also have the paperback or ebook. They also recommend books to friends and family who prefer to read. This works the other way around too. Translators and narrators are colleagues, not competitors.

Promo Tricks and Tips

However, back to Tweets and posts. You should store them for re-use. Store your articles for recycling too. You should have an account with all the top social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc, and as many of the others as possible eg Plurk, Xing, Folk’d. Pinterest, Livejournal, Diigo, Reddit, Tumblr, Flipboard, etc.

I have been told many times ‘Oh, I don’t want to have an account there, I don’t like them’. Needless to say, that this is missing the point. It doesn’t matter what you like, you don’t have to read the posts there, and you are not trying to sell books to yourself!

Get over it, and get selling!

I have over 4,000 messages that I have been gathering for years. If i have time, I write new ones, but if I don’t have time, I have plenty in reserve?

The resources below are those that I find most useful for selling books.

Translators and Narrators Resources

Please leave your comments and questions below.

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