A book publisher
finds a niche in a
troubled industry.

By LARRY ROHTER

ROCHESTER, New York - The publishing industry is in trouble; translated works account for, at best, 3 percent of the American book market; and budgets for higher education are shrinking. But none of this seems to deter Open Letter Books, a small, yearold press affiliated with the University of Rochester that publishes only literature in translation.

“There’s a set of readers out there that’s very interested in translations and international literature and is not getting what it wants,” said Chad W. Post, Open Letter’s director. “So we believe our business model can work. American literature has a lot of great works. But English-speaking readers don’t have full access to voices and viewpoints from around the world, and we’re trying to rectify that.”

Though none of Open Letter’s 16 titles has yet sold more than 3,000 copies, its efforts have quickly attracted attention and critical praise.

Open Letter books, including the recently published “Season of Ash,” by the Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi, have appeared on Best of 2009 lists; and Amazon.com, which has begun an effort to bring more international writers to the attention of American readers, recently awarded Open Letter a $20,000 grant to support publication of “The Wall in My Head,” an anthology by Eastern European writers about the collapse of Communism there.

Open Letter published its first title, a collection of essays by the Croatian novelist Dubravka Ugresic called “Nobody’s Home,” in September 2008. But more than a year earlier, to herald the book’s arrival and attract potential readers, Open Letter had begun a blog called Three Percent (rochester.edu/threepercent), a mordant reference to the literary ghetto to which translation is consigned.

Though it might have initially been conceived as a marketing device, Three Percent has turned into a lively clearing house for everything related to literature in translation, and logs more than two million page views a year . Readers can post reviews and learn what foreign publishing houses are up to.

A seven-member selection committee that includes University of Rochester faculty chooses the titles Open Letter publishes. While members of that group say they would not be averse to picking a potential best seller - the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s crime novels having shown once again that American readers will embrace some books not written in English - they say that is not their principal goal.

“What we are looking for is excellent work, from any language, eclectic modern fiction that is overlooked,” said Joanna Scott, a professor of English here who is the author of nine novels. “Commerce does not enter the discussions; I wouldn’t know a commercial book if I saw one.”

All of Open Letter’s books have the same distinctively lean, uncluttered design, comparable to specialty jazz labels like Blue Note or Impulse!, which built a loyal cadre of customers through a combination of a signature look and sound.

In line with that concept, Open Letter also offers a subscription service. For $100 a year, a reader can receive each of the books that Open Letter publishes during that time .

Translators, as might be expected, are delighted to see Open Letter’s emergence .

“Commercial publishing houses have become infected with the jackpot mentality,” said Clifford Landers, who has translated the Brazilian writer Rubem Fonseca’s collection “The Taker and Other Stories” for Open Letter. “But Open Letter creates an outlet for works that are not expected to have broad popular appeal but nonetheless are of important value in a literary sense.”