Amazon’s foreign publishing push: A customer data play

I’m trying to imagine everything Amazon knows about me. The company’s computers know the books and music I buy, the ones I click on, the ones I send as gifts. On my Kindle app, they can monitor the ones I read, and even gauge my enthusiasm. (As they well know, I’m struggling with The Golden Bowl.)

Given all that data, which foreign books would I be most likely to buy if they were translated? As I read on Mashable, that’s what Amazon wants to figure out. The new imprint, AmazonCrossing, will buy rights to non-English language books, translate them, and market them to readers statistically most likely to buy.

My question: Since the market for translated books in this market is small, how can they draw statistical correlations between North American readers and foreign writers they don’t know? I look at the French Amazon page for the first book Amazon is translating, Tierno Monnembo’s King of Kahel. Readers of that book appear to be interested largely on other non-English writers. I don’t see any Tom Clancy or Ian McEwan overlap.

Still, this is an interesting challenge: What are the most telling statistical correlations between people of different languages and cultures? In global markets, it’s an important question, and Amazon’s just starting its research.

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One detail. Translators are paid between $6,000 and $8,000 to for a 60,000-word novel. (That’s a small book, 5,000 fewer words than the Numerati).

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