The issue of the American Publishers’ Weekly that appeared as the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair was closing contained an article that said:

    While the American publishers in Germany last week might not have noticed it, the United States was not the center of attention at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This year, that honor went to Korea, which shelled out an estimated $13 million to conduct symposia, build and staff booths and mount extraordinary exhibitions on Korean literary history in a hall the size of a football field.

It's no secret that most large and medium-size American publishers are not exactly devoted to publishing literature in translation. And it's unclear that a program like this is going to change anyone's publishing program.

Of the several editors I asked, none was taking a special look at books by or about Korea and Koreans, and some seemed surprised that I'd even asked. (That a couple of titles by Koreans or Korean-Americans were just bought or are currently on submission was deemed a coincidence.)

While open, in theory, to the idea, publishers say, the realities of the marketplace—surprise!—win out. "We have a hard enough time getting our own books to readers," one cynic told me. "Books in translation are a very hard sell."

And while it's true that the average American publisher can probably count on one hand the number of translations that have turned bestseller (Gabriel García Márquez, Peter Hoeg, the recent Carlos Ruiz Zafón), there is a sense among the non-American publishers at the fair that the American failure to embrace non–English-speaking authors is yet another function of our arrogance and xenophobia. After all, the thinking goes, the Spanish, French and particularly the Germans buy our books all the time; it's as if we're expected to return the favor.

But publishing, for all its admirable, high-end and altruistic qualities, is not about politically correct favors, it is—or it should be—about publishing books that will sell.

So what should we deduce from this?