UK: 'The publishers' year: hits and misses of 2013'

       As far as year-end round-ups go, The Guardian's The publishers' year: hits and misses of 2013, where publishers also name a book they published that they feel deserved to do better as well as a book they wish they'd published, is among the most interesting.
       The ones they feel did undeservedly poorly are particularly revealing. A Faber creative director writes:

Translated fiction remains difficult in this country, even though publishers are undoubtedly much less reticent about committing to novels in another language. I was dispirited by the lack of attention, and sales, for My Fathers' Ghost is Climbing in the Rain by a young Argentine writer, Patricio Pron.

       A book by a talented writer, I continue to have some reservations about it; too-close-to-true, it might not have been the ideal book with which to introduce the author to English-speaking readers.
       Meanwhile, the Hamish Hamilton publisher says:

César Aira's three "novelitas" in a box didn't receive a single mainstream review, despite there being so much to say about this brilliant, playful, subversive Argentinian writer

       The boxed edition -- consisting of Ghosts, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, and The Literary Conference -- is pretty neat (get your copy at Amazon.co.uk), but always sounded like a pretty hard sell to me. New Directions seemed to do just fine with selling separate editions of these (and other) Airas, and while I understand the packaging-temptation it clearly was not the way to go.