English titles, hot sand and talking birds: why Rotopol gets bilingual
Two new paper books are on our virtual shelves since a few weeks: Hearsay by Lea Heinrich and Pyramids by René Rogge. And one is waiting to be printed and pre-ordered: Paniktotem, from Nadine Redlich. They all were made in a different binding, a more magazine like, to go with their short format of 40 pages or less. The three of them are in English, while most of other Rotopol comics are in German: we made this choice so they can be understood by non German-reader that we often meet at book-fairs, international festivals or online - we will continue to publish German ones still.
It’s not exactly a dedicated new English collection where all the books will look the same: every story will have its own size, paper, style or binding. Each book will come in an envelope which matches its genre and content.
It is a small experiment. We decided to take the risk of publishing in another language, because we believe it won’t stop German-speakers to read our books, as we noticed that a lot of them master English and already read it online or offine. That’s also why this blog is written in English and why our website is bilingual.
And what about hot sand and talking birds? Let’s preserve mystery until next post.