Sun Sets on Trafalgar

Sun 1 Mar 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin

Because I cannot keep up with time I hadn’t realized March was coming up so quickly and now we are a day away from rights to Amalia Gladhart’s translation of Angélica Gorodischer’s Trafalgar reverting to the estate. I’d meant to make a fuss a few weeks before this so instead: here’s a day or two of the ebook being $2 at Weightless. I don’t even have enough time to get a price change in on all the other ebookstores.

Usually we buy rights to publish a book for the term of copyright and I keep the title in print and try and find new avenues of interest for them. (70+% of the average bookshop sales are backlist titles such as this.) However, translations are often licensed for a limited period of time so for Trafalgar we had seven years from the date of signing the contract (2012-19) and then I renewed the license for another seven years (2019-2026).

As of March 3rd, we’ll have six months to accept returns from bookshops and sell off our remaining stock. Then I’ll offer the author’s estate and the translator copies of the book at cost plus shipping. Any remaining copies can either be recycled, donated, or I can pay the royalty so that I can keep offering the book for sale on our website — which is how we are able to sell off our remaining copies of Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation of Kalpa Imperial and Sue Burke’s translation of Prodigies.

I love that every book of Angélica’s is different. You can see it in the three we published and then expand your experience with Amalia Gladhart’s translation of Jaguar’s Tomb. I’m very happy Amalia’s going to translate more of Angélica’s books. Kalpa Imperial, the first of Angélica’s we published, will be reprinted by Penguin next year.

Trafalgar is full of surprises. There are stories (some available on Reactor, Lightspeed, & Belletrista) that play on familiar history and most play with ideas from and of science fiction. It is more fun, strange, and occasionally uncomfortable than I was expecting. I look forward to seeing who will publish it next and seeing what they do with it.