[mrweasel]

> books accessible in the US

Sadly books accessible in the US / English language is slowly becoming synonymous with general availability, through no fault of the US/UK or other English speaking countries. A huge amount of books are simply never translated to language with smaller markets. I can read English just fine, but an entire book is a struggle. There are so many books that I want to read, mostly non-fiction, and they are never going to be translated and even when they are circulation is low and reprints are rare. Normally I can read a book in Danish in about a week, depending on the time available, and English book is normally about three to four weeks.

To be clear: I solely blame Danish publishers and bookshops. They churn out crime/detective novel at an absolutely insane pace. Want to read about someone being killed and have the murder investigate by an alcoholic Scandinavian cop, the Danish publishers have you covered. Want to read "Meditations" in Danish, well screw you. Want to read the most popular book on this list, Demon Copperhead, well to bad. Slaughterhouse-Five you can get, for more than three times the price of the English version.

I get this is probably different for Chinese, German, French or Spanish, but for smaller language you either read what everyone else reads or you read English language books.

[marton_s]

> Sadly books accessible in the US / English language is slowly becoming synonymous with general availability, through no fault of the US/UK or other English speaking countries. A huge amount of books are simply never translated to language with smaller markets.

Depends on the market I guess. I've checked the availability of the top 10 books of 2023 on Shepherd (https://shepherd.com/bboy/2023) in Hungary, which is a tiny market of ~10 million people. 50% of the books are available in in translated version, which I think is not terrible.

[infruset]

Well, I don't think anyone in particular is to blame; I'm guessing Danish publishers and booksellers cater to their public and have little economic leeway to risk translating risky books for a small linguistic group. That's the problem, it's the effect of the forces at play in a global free market economy dominated by the English language: we all have to roll over and make way for what sells, regardless of the respect literatures and languages otherwise deserve.

[mrweasel]

I'd agree with that, it's just that the bookstores complain about rapidly declining business, and honestly most bookstores aren't bookstores anymore, they are arts and crafts stores with a few books. It's just that if they want to sell a larger number of books, then they need to have a larger selection, which would require them to invest in translations.

It's true that translations are costly, so instead they opt to push books they know will sell well, but the supermarkets sell those exact same books. It's just that without a large selection there's no reason to specifically go to a bookstore and so they die out.

[cies]

Agreed.

A side note I want to add to this: copyright and other IP laws make sure a lot more money goes from Denmark to the US than from the US to Denmark. I think smaller cultural domains are loosing in a sense. European movie makers constantly need grants where Hollywood booms.