The U.S. has become an increasingly important market for small literary U.K. publishers. That is especially true for publishers working in translation, and even more so for those that have attracted attention from award juries. Look no further than And Other Stories, publisher of The Book of Disappearance, written by Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem and translated by Sinan Antoon, which was longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, and Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, which won the prize earlier this month.
Mushtaq’s book, a collection of short stories about Muslim women living in India to which PW gave a starred review, quickly sold out in U.S. bookstores and online. Before reprints could be delivered, its e-book edition was deeply discounted to take full advantage of the short window of attention that is all-important for a publisher like And Other Stories.
Founder and publisher Stefan Tobler says North America accounts for around half of And Other Stories’ sales. He argues that the long-held belief that American readers are not interested in buying books in translation, especially from cultures and languages they are unfamiliar with, is a myth.
“I honestly think that nowadays most English-language literary readers are perfectly happy to read translations,” Tobler says, noting that the choke point to growing the market further rests not with readers who are uninterested in buying the books but with publishers who are unable to publish more of them. “The blockage seems to be industry-side: about finding the right books for the press and the right translators. For many of the literatures of the world, once you get beyond the ‘big’ languages, there is a relatively small pool of literary translators into English, and far fewer editors who can read the books in their original languages.”
When the publisher can find a book that resonates with readers, it can and does sell in significant numbers. Noting that translations from Spanish have a strong built-in market in the U.S., Tobler points to the success of Signs Preceding the End of the World by Mexican author Yuri Herrera, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman. The novel, about a girl who is trying to bring her migrant brother back from the U.S. to Mexico, has sold more than 100,000 copies—and more than 50,000 in North America—since its publication in 2015, according to the publisher. The And Other Stories catalog now includes a larger range of Spanish-language writers, including Argentine César Aira, Uruguayan Mario Levrero, and Mexican Pulitzer Prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza, who runs the MFA creative writing program in Spanish at the University of Houston.
Typically, the press’s books are published simultaneously in the U.S. and U.K. “For a while, we were acquiring almost exclusively books that we could publish both in North America and Europe,” Tobler says, “but we are making more and more exceptions to that.” The press has begun acquiring some North America–only rights, such as for That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu, published in 2023.
U.S.-born Adam Freudenheim, the publisher and managing director of London-based Pushkin Press, concurs with Tobler. In 2022, Pushkin was named Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards; since then, it has seen more and more reasons to expand its footprint stateside.
“My sense is that in recent years the U.S. market—like the U.K. market—has become more and more receptive to works in translation, both commercial and literary,” Freudenheim says. That is particularly the case, he adds, for books translated from Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. As an example, Freudenheim points to Pushkin’s most popular series, Seishi Yokomizo’s mid-20th-century Japanese novels featuring detective Kosuke Kindaichi; The Honjin Murders, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, is the press’s bestselling title in the States.
Pushkin has recently employed a strategy of selling off North American rights to some of its most popular titles. Those include Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses, published by Scribner in the U.S., where more than 750,000 copies have been sold across formats, according to Pushkin; The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, translated from the German by Philip Boehm, which is published in the U.S. by Metropolitan and is Pushkin’s first book to hit 100,000 English-language copies sold worldwide; and At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis, which won the 2021 International Booker Prize and is published in the U.S. by FSG.
More recently, Freudenheim says, the press’s relationship with the U.S. has grown deeper: in May 2024, Pushkin acquired New Hampshire–based Steerforth Press and Hanover Publisher Services, which had previously provided it with distribution services, and with which Pushkin had a working relationship for more than a decade. At the time, Freudenheim called the acquisition “a natural step.” Today, he says U.S. sales continue to grow, noting that the market now accounts for 20%–25% of Pushkin’s overall sales.
Edinburgh-based Charco Press is another publisher in Consortium’s distribution stable to attract the attention of prize juries with literary translations, and its Spanish-language titles and translations in particular have proven a good niche for Charco in the U.S. Caroline Casey, Charco’s director for North American publicity and marketing, says that “U.S. sales have grown dramatically since we launched in 2016, and now account for 55% of our overall sales, outpacing those in the U.K.”
Casey attributes much of the stateside growth to the press’s smart packaging and marketing amid a burgeoning interest in Spanish-language titles. “When I’m visiting stores, I consistently hear that they want to build out their Spanish-language sections, and our sales have been steadily increasing, as more people become aware of the Charco brand,” she says. “One thing that Samuel McDowell and Carolina Orloff, Charco’s cofounders, set out to do was create a unified look and sensibility, which was such a smart marketing decision. If you’ve loved a Charco book, you’re able to recognize another one in a bookstore. It has really helped us build an identifiable list with booksellers and readers.”
The company’s bestselling author to date is Argentine novelist Claudia Piñeiro, whose novel Elena Knows was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2022. Earlier this year, Piñeiro, who has had six novels translated into English—including three by Charco—was featured as an Author of the Day at the 2025 London Book Fair. “We’ve made a real commitment to Piñeiro’s work, and people have really responded to it,” Casey says.
Among the other Latin American authors in Charco’s catalog of translations are Argentina’s Selva Almada and Roque Larraquy, Chile’s Diamela Eltit, Mexico’s Margo Glantz, and Uruguayan centennial poet Ida Vitale. In addition to the translations, Charco publishes Larraquy’s work in the Spanish and distributes it throughout the Americas. And under its Spanish-language OriginalES imprint, the press also publishes Colombia’s José Eustasio Rivera, Cuba’s Karla Suárez, Mexico’s Ave Barrera, and Uruguay’s Fernanda Trías, among others.
Adam Critchley is a writer in Mexico City.
