The thrill of the foreign: Principled Profit published in India
In some ways, it’s an even bigger thrill to open a package and find copies of your book from another country than to get the finished books from the printer in the first place.
It’s happened to me twice: several years ago, when I received five Korean copies of Marketing Without Megabucks: How to Sell Anything on a Shoestring–and the other day, when I got two copies of “Ethics in Marketing”–which is what Jaico, the publisher in Mumbai, India, decided to call its version of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. In a spify, hardcover edition, no less. The only other book of mine ever to be published in hardcover was my very first one, published in 1980 and long out of print: a book on why nuclear power is a horrible way to generate electricity.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t that happy with the production *inside* the Indian version. Still, it means a great deal to a writer to be taken seriously halfway around the world, to have my ideas deemed worthy of widespread distribution.
The book is also supposed to be published in a Spanish-language edition out of Mexico City–but I never count unhatched chickens, especially since Chinese deals for two of my books fell through late in the process.
India seems quite interested in PrinProfit. I had the book exhibited at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and received six inquiries–every one of them from India. I personally think this book should do very well in Japan and Germany, among other places.
Oh yes, and it’s really cool to be able to show off the Korean version of MWM. I can’t read the text at all, but they used the English-language samples I’d included.
