I receive many queries from business/growth authors not based in the US/Canada who want to publish their work in the US. I have to explain to them that this is a challenge--even if they're well-established in their native domiciles.Many authors based abroad like the idea of their book being available in the US marketplace. After all, the US is the biggest business-book marketplace in the world, so why not? Unfortunately, the marketplace here rarely welcomes foreign authors. Is the US inherently ethnocentric in this sense? Perhaps. But the US demands nothing of foreign authors it does not already demand of its own authors: The author has to ALREADY be a known entity or player in the US market, and that means US media coverage, US speaking/keynoting events four or five times a month at least, extensive social media followership, active writing and placing of articles in major US media outlets, and so on. Foreign authors will often tell me they visit the US occasionally and/or have networks of people/associations/organizations they know that could help publicize their work. But that, honestly, remains more an aspiration, not a certainty. Publishers have to go on what the author has established, not aspirations. Foreign authors, to get published in the US, have to be known in the US and have active practices here.
Bestsellers in other countries do not necessarily become bestsellers here. Now, authors have argued then that US bestsellers become bestsellers elsewhere, so why not vice-versa? It's a good question. Ethnocentricity on the part of the US markets? Possibly. A (somewhat) legitimate belief that since the US remains the concentrated business/media capital of the world, that it is simply knowledge-osmosis (and one cannot expect reverse-osmosis)? Also possibly true. Simple (and perhaps ugly) exceptionalism? I’ve heard that argument, too. I honestly think it’s a combination of all these aforementioned factors.
Crankily yours,
Jeevan
