yoni

Wikipedia is a good starting point for this. ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number.

 

Wiki says "ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for that country or territory regardless of the publication language. The ranges of ISBNs assigned to any particular country are based on the publishing profile of the country concerned, and so the ranges will vary depending on the number of books and the number, type, and size of publishers that are active. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture and thus may receive direct funding from government to support their services. In other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the stated purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some other countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations, the issuing of ISBNs requires payment of a fee."

 

thanks, 

anyone else knows how the laws of copyright works with a pen name? 

Hello to everyone, I'm thinking about publishing my work on KDP. But I'm planning to do so with a pen name. how would the copyright law work in that matter?

Also, I have seen this ISBN code talked about, can someone care to explain about it or what it does?

Thanks ahead for the help.

My advice: Go for it! Why not?

 

I'm a similar situation. English isn't my native language, yet I decided to try my hand at writing and publishing a work in English.

 

I live in one of the largest countries in the world, and you can say we do read a lot. However, the market isn't really good for fantasy/fiction. They're seen as childish, and we read mostly worldwide bestsellers, translated to our language and marketed differently than outside our corner of the world. We have successful native authors, but they mostly write other genres.

 

But I like my native language, and I'd love to see the market for local authors bloom. For me it was more a matter of mustering enough courage to also try the English route—then decide how I'd work and which publishing strategy I'd adopt.

 

The strategy: I want to publish in two markets/languages, English first. There is a certain glamour associated with foreign works, as you can imagine. Succeeding in getting published in English would give me a little head start to get published here, while publishing here first wouldn't help with getting published in English. I also know more about the steps involved in getting published in US/UK than here. Another point that weighted in my decision was the likeness of finding a good local editor specializing in fantasy: lower, since we don't see much local fantasy/fiction being published.

 

How I work: Despite writing/reading in English on a daily basis I don't feel fully comfortable in writing fiction in it. I'm proficient, yet knowing my tendency to build sentences oddly I double guess mine a lot. Luckily for us, wanting a final product in English doesn't mean you need to work exclusively in English.

 

I'm writing my first draft in my native language. I take notes on the English equivalents that came to my mind while writing—remember you don't need to translate everything literally, focus on the mood and meaning instead.

 

I'm an amateur writer, mind you, and my writing takes a fair amount of editing to become fit for human consumption. When I'm reviewing the entire story in the second draft to reorder and tighten up sentences I do that in English. It has been working well for me so far, because my needs were:

 

1st Writing freely and comfortably; 2nd Making what I wrote stronger.

Using my native language, in which I'm very confident, allows me to write and dare in the exact amounts I should for a first draft; using English (which is a conciser language than my native) in the second draft forces me to reorder my thoughts and output a better story.

 

Figure out all your personal needs and quirks. Develop a workflow that best fits them.

 

Regarding dialogue, I advise you to read a lot in English to get used to it. We, non-native English speakers, are at an increased risk of inadvertently adopting the character/author voice. Avoid it by reading a lot of books, and from different authors. There are the added benefits of getting used to English in general, increasing your vocabulary and learning the equivalents of local idioms.

 

I second Shrike's advice about listening podcasts. Writing Excuses is a good start. They have a clear accent, and you'll simultaneously train your "English ear" and learn about writing. (:

 

You'll still need first-hand practice, and for that you have a convenient tool in your hands already: Internet. Forum/comments discussions flow differently than a live conversation, but they still do a fine job as practice. Better this than no practice at all, right? To expose yourself to more spontaneous conversations, try live chats and online games. The downside is stumbling on a lot of mangled or non-native English, the upside is getting familiarized to English while you have fun in your leisure time.

Practice in your native language as well. When you get a good hang of character voices/dialogue pacing + proficiency in English much of what you know in your language carries to your writing in English.

Just want to say, thanks for the advice, from you and everyone who commented here. 

After a long time in which I almost completely forgot about this post, I started to write in English. And I also finished my first short story after re-writing it for 3-4 times and getting my family to help with the English slang and the construction of phrases. I built my own method of writing which is; to write the first draft as loosely as I can with great focus on the plot, even though some things in the story or some sentences don't add up or don't even make sense, it didn't matter, because I would rewrite it nevertheless. and then I would keep doing that until I have a clear picture of the story and the plot and every loose end would be tied. still, the dialogues are a burden to me. 

But my dilemma still goes on, after more than a year of writing in English a voice in my head still tries to convince me to write in Hebrew (my native language). then I composed a pros and cons list of writing in English VS Native language. 

Pros of English: Bigger market, easier to get published (I can publish my books on amazon KDP. ), Easier to get fans, readers, and an overall crowd. 

And now we move for the Cons of writing in English: my writing is really slow (a max of 500 words a day), and since I have many grammar errors I need an editor for that. Also, I would probably won't immigrate from my country, a thing that would make it harder to maintain the English voice and slang, and the last thing which is the dialogue. 

Now, the pros of writing in my Native Language: much easier to write (at least 1000 words a day without breaking a sweat), I would finish books quicker, I would probably would not need a freelance editor since I could only publish with a book publishing company (and  they would provide everything.) the dialogues and voices of the characters would be ten times easier. Also, I consider myself a pretty patriotic man, and I kinda believe that if I write and publish in my country it would support the market. 

A thing that always jump to me as an argument is Paulo Coelho, he is a famous writer who translated his works to English (you've probably read his most famous one "The Alchemist") and then I say to myself: "if I'm truly good at writing, I could make it in any language." 

But when i look at the Cons of Writing in my native language:

I can't publish it on the internet in an Ebook format, the market in my country is pretty small and even the successful writers here, and I mean REALLY successful, that are known, by almost everyone in the country, make just the same as a worker on a minimum wage. its pretty sad. 

I think that the real difference is when you start out, I think that it would be easier to start to publish in English in amazon KDP, but I also believe if I'm good I could be translating my work to international audiences. 

What do you guys think? 

I can see how dialogue might be a problem. And even if you have friends who speak English and you practice with them, it might not have the same ring as it would if spoken by a native speaker. TV shows and movies aren't very far off the mark. They're perfectly fine. You can also spend time listening to unscripted words like some podcasts to get a feel for how native English speakers use the language.

I'll sure check it out, thanks.

yeah, I understand. your point. I personally don't like my native language, spoken or written, that's why I read books which have been written in English, and regarding to know how to tell a story I still have a lot to learn and improve regarding the language which the book is written. the thing that worries me the most is the dialogs, until I won't live in an English speaking country I won't truly know how to write a dialogue (or so that's what I think) everything I know about dialogues in English are from tv shows and movies. 

I have a dilemma that keep bothers me every time I start or even think about writing as a career. The dilemma is about writing in English even if it's not my native language. well, why wouldn't I want to write in my native language? because I live in a very small country of about 7-8 million people. and about 1 million of them read at least a book a month, and if they read a book, it's not written by an author from our country. because books in my country are expensive so a lot of us just buy a book that is written in English, by ordering it online and it is quite cheaper. 
also the book industry here is dying and authors (even the ones that considered famous here) earn just above the minimum wage. I have read a few books from authors from my country, some were terrible and some were kinda good, but one thing they all share is that they earn nothing. 
so I thought to myself that if I even became good at some point, I would still find it hard to earn money, I also thought about writing and immediately translating my books so I could publish them abroad, but I would have to rely on a really good translator and that means an expensive one. 
so I tried to write in English for quite a while and it's hard, it takes a lot of energy and time just to think about a few sentences, not to mention that I have a dictionary opened in a new tab that I have to check every five minutes if I wrote the right word, and with all that effort of time I could manage to squeeze 300 words a day, that's not much, but I thought to myself, hey I just started to write, I could reach more words in a month or two until I tried to write in my native language, and I got to tell you it was easy, I could squeeze 1000 words roughly in the same time with the filling that I could write even more. plus my dialogs in English are also terrible.
I have checked for famous authors who wrote in a different language from their native one and I have seen about two or three, Nabokov is a famous example. but its still not enough. writing in English is opening to a potential of millions of people who can buy and read my books. 
And I thought about moving to the U.S or Canada when I will be in my twenties, so that might be easier for me to write in English then, but its a few years away from me. 
So finally my question is, should I write in my native language OR practice writing in English even though it is extremely hard. if writing in English would eventually get easier I would be willing to keep it on, but  I don't know if writing in my own native language will truly fulfill my potential. 
That is my dilemma and I hope someone could help me with that.

TL;DR 
I am thinking about to write in English even though it's not my native language, but the problem is that it's really hard and might not pay off. what should I do? writing in English will expose me to millions of costumers that might want to buy my book, but in my country almost no one buys the books that our authors write.