Quote:
Originally Posted by Ortep
The problem is that there are only 16 million Dutch people and about 6 million in Belgium that speak Dutch. So even if we have 5 times as much people writing as in English speaking countries we still have not many writers. And off course not everybody likes every writer. There are simply more English books than Dutch ones. And English is relatively easy to learn for somebody from The Netherlands, English and Dutch are related languages (Unlike Spanish  ) There is a lot of translated work, but not everyting of course. And worse: Only part 1 an 2 of a 5 piece work are translated.
I read English books all the time, but like Harry, I'll often have to guess the meaning of words. Not beeing a native English speaker that will happen to me even more often. When reading a p-book I won't bother grabbing a dictionary an page through it to find a word. Unless of course, it is absolutely vital for the understanding of the book. But on my cybook it really makes reading more enjoyable.
The first book I bought for my Cybook was a dictionary. And there is small other 'problem' Not many Dutch books make it into an e-book. I only found *five* that I wanted to read, and those were translations of English books. And much more expensive than the originals
And there is another thing in our country. We have a 'fixed' (high) book price. That is done to protect starting writers an poets. The bestsellers subsidise the 'slow sellers'. We have writers that sell only 300 books. But that does not mean they are bad writers. It is simply because the market is to small. They would never survive if they would have to do it on there own. A publisher can afford to take risks or lose money on those writers.
That is why I started reading English when I was a student. Much cheaper |
Thank's Ortep, couldn't have said it better
There is one book in dutch i'm going to buy though. I always wanted to read 'de eeuw van mijn vader' from Geert Mak. Since that one is available as ebook I'll buy that one somewhere in the near future...