English to German Book Translation Services for Indie Authors
Romantasy &
romance novels
We translate full novels and series – single titles, novellas, multi-book arcs – keeping your voice intact for German readers raised on Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca Yarros, and Bridgerton.
What's included: glossary of names/places/magic systems for series consistency; full proofread by the other half of the duo; free revisions; money-back guarantee.
Author marketing
Blurbs, Amazon DE product pages, A+ content, BookFunnel landing pages, newsletter sequences. The marketing copy that converts on Tolino and KDP Germany – not just a literal translation of your English copy.
Outside fiction
Author websites, online courses, the occasional non-fiction book. We take on a small number of these each year – when the topic fits and the timing works.
YOUR IP, YOUR MONEY
Intellectual property & royalties
When we translate your book, you remain the sole owner of the intellectual property of the German translation. This means you keep full control over how your book is published, distributed, and marketed. You also retain 100% of the royalties from every sale of the translated edition.
Many translation services work on a royalty-share basis, taking a percentage of your earnings for years to come. We believe that your creative work – and any revenue it generates – should belong entirely to you. By offering translation services for a one-time fee, we ensure that you can enjoy all future profits from your book without ongoing obligations or deductions.
Our mission is to help you expand your readership into the German-speaking market while protecting your rights and ensuring your success. With us, your words – and the rewards they bring – remain entirely yours.
Our translation process – step by step
01
Inquiry & quote
You send us the manuscript (Word, PDF, or just a chapter to start). Within 24 hours you get a no-obligation quote: fixed per-word fee, realistic delivery date. You confirm; we book the slot.
02
Glossary & first read
Before we translate a single line, we read the manuscript end-to-end. Then we build a glossary — character names, place names, magic systems, in-world terms, honorifics, key recurring phrases — and lock it. For series work, the glossary extends across every book in the arc, so book three reads like book one.
03
Translation pass with DeepL Pro
This is the working translation. One of us goes through your manuscript sentence by sentence, with DeepL Pro open. For every line, DeepL offers several alternatives — we read all of them and pick the version that fits your voice, the scene, the genre register. Where none of the options work, we rewrite from scratch. Every line is read and decided by a human at the word level.
04
Cold read by the second translator
The other half of the duo reads the chapter cold — no DeepL, no source text — as a German reader would. We flag what's stilted, what sounds literally translated, what's lost the voice. We sit down together and rewrite. Roughly 30% of the text changes here, from "accurate" to "alive."
05
Rest, final pass, and proofread
We deliberately let the manuscript rest for a few days. Then we read it one more time, end-to-end: grammar, spelling, formatting, glossary consistency, voice continuity across chapters.
06
Delivery & money-back guarantee
You get the finished manuscript in the format you need, on the date we promised. Free revisions until you're happy. If after good-faith revisions we can't get it where you want it, full refund – no hassle, no questions.
WHERE WE USE AI (AND WHERE WE DON'T)
AI is a tool. Our judgment is the work.
We use DeepL Pro — the enterprise version, with privacy guarantees that mean your unpublished manuscript never enters a public training set. But we don't use it the way most translators do.
We don't paste a chapter in, get a draft, and clean it up. We work through your manuscript sentence by sentence, with DeepL Pro open. For every line, DeepL surfaces three to five translation alternatives. We read all of them – and we pick the version that matches your voice, your heat level, your trope.
That selection is the craft.
Picking between "Schatz" and "Liebste" for how a fae prince addresses his mate. Knowing that a literal translation of "brother in arms" reads as faintly military in German and choosing "Waffenbruder" or "Gefährte" based on the scene. Catching when DeepL has defaulted to a Victorian register that's wrong for contemporary romantasy, and rewriting the line from scratch.
A human is making every word-level decision. Two humans, actually – because the second of us reads every chapter cold (no DeepL, no source text) and flags anything that still sounds translated. By the end, roughly 30% of a chapter has been rewritten from what DeepL first suggested.
What we will not do:
✗ Run your manuscript through ChatGPT, consumer Claude, or any tool that trains on inputs.
✗ Use AI to make voice, register, or character-naming decisions. Those are ours, every time.
✗ Hand you raw DeepL output and call it a translation.
What this means for your book: a German edition that reads as a German novel – not as a translated one.
What it means for you: a fair price, because we use modern tools to focus our time where it matters, instead of doing mechanical work that DeepL is genuinely good at.