Sébastien Jameux asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Hello. I'm a huge fan from France, both for your SciFi and fantasy works, and I wondered if there is a particular reason for your "Penric & Desdemona" series to not being translated yet in french ? I asked your publisher here several times and never been answered. Even if I could, of course, read these stories in english, it makes me sad and a bit angered that your french readers can't access them. Many thanks.

Lois McMaster Bujold
I'd be delighted to sell the Penric series to a French publisher, now collected into 4 tidy book-sized volumes for just this purpose:

Penric's Progress
Penric's Travels
Penric's Labors
Penric's Intrigues

Operators are standing by... (At my agent's French agent, Agence Litteraire Lenclud, which French publishers presumably know how to find.)

But this decision is up to the publishers, who have to choose books that they think will sell well, so they don't sink their business. I have absolutely no guess how my works fall in that decision matrix, except that ~~if Sauron had the Ring we would know it~~ I lack evidence that I'm a top seller in France. Persistent, consistent, maybe, but not breakout. C'est la vie.

Yes, that's a negative feedback loop. Welcome to publishing. (But not e-publishing, which is why I'm now a hybrid indie-traditional writer.)

Ta, L.

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