![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Time contraction...
Sep. 18th, 2013 06:37 pmOne would think I would have become accustomed to the phenomenon by now, in which I am told that things at work will reach critical mass at the end of the month (in terms of turnaround time, meaning that folks are going to want stuff back yesterday), only to find this to be the case almost two weeks before the fact.
So, it's been a pretty demanding day, in terms of translations. One item is left on the plate; and the good news is that it's an item I've promised to deliver tomorrow during the morning.
That said, I am well-and-truly knackered.
I've been looking at Amazon as a platform for selling books, and it occurs to me that the "typical" low price that I see ($0.01) obviously implies that the seller is making his or her nut out of the $3.99 shipping charge. This sort of makes sense, especially if books are sent via the media rate.
But what I really wonder about is how a newcomer can break into this niche, as so very many of the sellers have hundreds of thousands of feedback ratings?
Apropos of which, I just finished reading A Suitcase Full of Blood, by Falko Rademacher, which I decided to pick up not only because of the very many five-star reviews on Amazon, but also because of the one or two one-star reviews from people who didn't like the book at all. (I suppose this is yet another example of noticing how there are some people whose thumbs-down—and the way they express their disapproval—is almost as good as a glowing endorsement, at least to me.) No translator was mentioned, though it is entirely possible that Rademacher translated the book himself.
Apropos of recent reads, I might heartily recommend Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor. It's not exactly the catchiest of titles, but the themes of memory, mathematics, and baseball that runs through the book steadily held my attention, as the interaction between the characters kept me wanting to see and know more. The translation, by Stephen Snyder, aptly stayed out of the way of the story, as far as I could tell.
Cheers...
So, it's been a pretty demanding day, in terms of translations. One item is left on the plate; and the good news is that it's an item I've promised to deliver tomorrow during the morning.
That said, I am well-and-truly knackered.
I've been looking at Amazon as a platform for selling books, and it occurs to me that the "typical" low price that I see ($0.01) obviously implies that the seller is making his or her nut out of the $3.99 shipping charge. This sort of makes sense, especially if books are sent via the media rate.
But what I really wonder about is how a newcomer can break into this niche, as so very many of the sellers have hundreds of thousands of feedback ratings?
Apropos of which, I just finished reading A Suitcase Full of Blood, by Falko Rademacher, which I decided to pick up not only because of the very many five-star reviews on Amazon, but also because of the one or two one-star reviews from people who didn't like the book at all. (I suppose this is yet another example of noticing how there are some people whose thumbs-down—and the way they express their disapproval—is almost as good as a glowing endorsement, at least to me.) No translator was mentioned, though it is entirely possible that Rademacher translated the book himself.
Apropos of recent reads, I might heartily recommend Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor. It's not exactly the catchiest of titles, but the themes of memory, mathematics, and baseball that runs through the book steadily held my attention, as the interaction between the characters kept me wanting to see and know more. The translation, by Stephen Snyder, aptly stayed out of the way of the story, as far as I could tell.
Cheers...
