Big in Holland

Being an author is a mixed bag. What will today hold – will it be glamorous events and people saying you’re are brilliant, or will it be slamming your head against the keyboard and wishing for a steady paycheque? It’s more often the latter, but not always.

My first novel, How to Kill a Guy in Ten Ways, which I published under the name Eve Kellman for reasons I might go into one day, has just been published in Dutch. It has a whole new look, and I found the whole thing extremely exciting.

In the UK, this book did well. It was in all the supermarkets and sold a decent number of copies. Some people said nice things about it. The audio edition graced the top ten. My mum didn’t tell me off too much about all the swearing. But it was all the brilliant work of the sales, marketing and publicity teams at Avon/HarperCollins.

After writing it, I wasn’t actually involved. That’s not a complaint; it’s just the fact of things. Publishers have plans for books, and sometimes you are needed and sometimes you aren’t.

This is all to say that I had never actually done anything like book signing or interviews or shaking hands with fans until this weekend just gone, when I was flown out to the Netherlands by my new Dutch publisher, Volt, and treated like a minor celebrity.

Sterre, my marketer, met me at the airport with a copy of my novel held up like a nameplate. I was interviewed by the wonderful Bernice from De Telegraaf, and I nervously babbled through it at a mile a minute.

I was taken to a city called Zwolle, where I stayed in the breathtaking Hotel Staatsman. It’s an old government building with stained glass windows, intricately painted walls and with a freestanding bathtub in my gigantic room. In the corridors, I awkwardly filmed content for TikTok which I was too old to understand with the wonderful Jennifer, was taken for dinner, and then to the insanely beautiful bookshop Van Der Velde, housed in an old church.

This was the main event. Book Haven was an evening organised by Van Der Velde for avid readers to meet authors, have books signed, and, most importantly, buy buy buy. The doors opened and five hundred people streamed in as the original church organ was played by two cheerful men. At one point, a dance troop appeared and a child was thrown from a balcony. That was part of the act, not a horrific twist. It was all absolutely mad.

I signed books, spoke to fans, and generally felt like Margot Robbie at the Barbie premiere.

I’m on a poster!

The next day, I was off to Amsterdam to sign more books in the city’s biggest bookstore, Scheltema. The weekend ended with drinks in the library of the historic Ambassade Hotel. The hotel is a favourite of authors, and everyone who stays there signs a copy of their book for the library. How to Kill a Guy in Ten Ways is now in the proud company of authors such as Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, and Paul Auster. Somehow I think mine may get pushed to the back.

I rounded the trip off with a few days in Utrecht, where my fiancé and I drank buckets of wine, ate bitterballen and cycled around flower fields.

Not only did I meet some wonderful people – Sterre de Bont, my marketer; Michelle Bot, my glamorous editor; Jennifer, the brilliant BookTokker; and many others – but I learnt a lot.

Mainly, that the Netherlands is wildly beautiful. My fiancé asked my editor Michelle if Zwolle was a particularly prosperous town and she looked confused. ‘No,’ she said, ‘everywhere in the Netherlands is like this.’

Ouch.

A man who rented me a kayak said he wasn’t a fan of England. ‘A wasteland’ was the word he used.

Ouch again.

I also learnt that publishing there is hard.

Dutch people are better at speaking English than the English. They are so good at it that many of them prefer to read novels in their second language. It’s hard to know exact numbers but the internet, oh God of knowledge, suggests that it’s about 60%.

Why is that? English language books are cheaper and usually available earlier as so many originate in the US and UK. Many people prefer to read original words if possible – jokes don’t always translate perfectly and you may miss some of the author’s intentions. There are also more words in English than Dutch, and so some feel that the translations may be limiting.

The younger generation in particular prefers to pick up novels in English – Sterre told me of comments on her social media posts suggesting it’s ‘cringe’ to read in Dutch.

They stacked far more English copies than Dutch for me to sign

Why does this matter for the publishers? Well, they don’t make any money from it. Dutch publishers will, in general, own Dutch language rights rather than rights to any copies of the book sold in that territory, and book shops will sell both versions. So even if Volt put a lot of money and time into convincing people to buy my book, if they go to the till with the English edition they won’t see a penny.

One way they try to combat this is by making the Dutch editions utterly beautiful. I’ve never seen such extravagant sprayed edges. It was almost enough to make me fill a tote bag myself and vow to learn the language later – though, as I’ve already told you, I’m a quitter and have given up learning at least five languages, so I didn’t kid myself.

But sprayed edges and foil and all the bells and whistles make printing expensive. Not only are the publishers vying for a bilingual market that prefers cheaper, readily available English books, but in making their own editions so covetable they must spend a fortune to produce them.

There is a small push to acquire English language rights in the Netherlands, meaning that the money from those copies sold in the country would go to the Dutch publisher rather than the British or US one. It would be a complete game changer for the country’s publishing industry, but the British and U.S. publishers won’t give them up without a fight. Why would they, when they get rewarded by so many Dutch sales with no extra work?

However, as the country becomes more fluent in English with each generation, the battle will one day have to be fought. After being shown such a brilliant time by Sterre, Michelle, Jennifer, and the others, I am on Team Holland when it comes to fair return on sales. After all, imagine the treatment they’d give authors if they made double the money?

Follow:

TikTok @sterreslittlelife

TikTok @jenniferleest

Insta @vanderveldeindebroeren

Insta @spannendeboeken