In an essay at the Three Percent blog, Open Letter Books director Chad W. Postresponded to Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson’s decision to withdraw his press from future participation in the Best Translated Book Awards.
In the essay, Post confessed that “reading about Dennis’s post on dozens and dozens of blogs and tweets and whatever rocked my mind a little bit.” The director explained that the awards received $25,000 from Amazon–a $5,000 award for two winning translators and two winning authors and $5,000 to help the 14 judges attend the awards ceremony.
Here’s more from Post’s essay: “Point being, unless Melville House stops publishing literature in translation (which I don’t think is going to happen anytime soon), their titles will still be considered for the award. We won’t expect any review copies to be arriving on the doorsteps of our panelists anytime soon (although seeing that the majority are also reviewers, we might end up receiving more books than we expect), and if a Melville House title is chosen, we will offer the money to the winning author and translator. It’s up to them if they want to reject it or not. We’ll still promote the book, try and get people to read it, etc., etc.”