Celebrating our International Partners on our 25th Anniversary: Tuttle Mori Agency, Japan

In 2017 we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of our founding. From the very beginning, Berrett-Koehler books have been widely translated to many different languages and wonderfully received all over the world. Over the years, we have signed over two thousand foreign translation rights deals. We could not have done this without the tireless work of our translation rights agents around the globe. As part of our year-long celebration, we will be featuring one of these foreign partners every month.  We asked each of them to provide us with a few words describing their experiences working with BK.

We start with Japan’s Tuttle Mori Agency. Headed by Manami Tamaoki, the Tuttle-Mori team has been pitching our books to Japanese publishers since 1993. They are our longest standing foreign agent. Over the years, we have seen some of our books take off in Japan in ways we could have never imagined. We are grateful for all their work and enthusiasm. Here is what they have to say:

Working with our friends at Berrett-Koehler Publishers is one of the most rewarding experiences in our foreign rights world.

BK books always pose the best questions, and invite us to consider what is most important in our lives, in our community, in the world we inhabit. Your books help us define what a truly better future might be, and how we can work towards building stewardship, quality, partnership, inclusion, and sustainability in our space too.

We are an ocean apart, yet we learn how similar our values and goals and challenges are fundamentally through exchanges with you.

We at Tuttle-Mori Agency consider ourselves extremely fortunate to be part of the BK community, and to be able to offer your eye-opening, pioneering books to the Japanese publishing market. We strive to build an understanding among our Japanese publishing community about what BK stands for, as your on-the-ground representative since 1993. By working together on every book and many a bestseller, we learn how timeless BK books are.

One example is Leadership and Self-Deception, which recently went through another wave of media spotlight ten years after publication here, when a World Cup winning Rugby star mentioned it was one of the most influential books he had ever read. Another example is Repacking Your Bags, which was insightfully published during the booming economy in 1995, and was one of the first books to bring awareness to the load we carry, and how to make the journey to where we belong.

We are inspired as individuals and as an organization, by the dedication to your mission, the creativity of your books and products, the pursue of new ideas, the constant effort to strive to be even better.

Taking part in the Berrett-Koehler Future Search BK2020 in 2008 was an opportunity to experience how the dynamic BK community operates firsthand. The above are all passionately, comprehensively communicated to us (and to the entire foreign rights world! ) through Maria Jesus and  Catherine’s excellent, irresistible pitches for new and backlist titles,  and informative rights guides.

We wish you a wonderful celebration in year 2017, and look forward to your pioneering titles, to your great newsletters, and to many more years of delightful collaboration with the Berrett-Koehler community.

Warmest wishes from Tokyo,

Fumika, Shoko, Miho, Yuka, Hiroko, Miou and Manami