This will be a short article helping self-published authors around the world understand if their book written in their unique home language will be accepted online. I will list the supported publishing languages of Amazon and Smashwords for those authors publishing an eBook and Createspace for those authors who still want to feel their book in a paperback format.
As a South African, our country supports 11 official languages and as a result I often have curious authors wondering if their Zulu, Xhosa or Swahili manuscript will be accepted for publishing on Amazon and the other online eBook platforms. I find that Googling “What languages does Smashwords/ Amazon accept” does not always give you an answer.
Amazon is one of the few eBook platforms that lists the exact languages accepted on the KDP platform. Other (e)Book sales platforms such as Smashwords and Createspace simply have sweeping statements such as “We support most languages.” Or something similar.
After chatting with the Amazon support staff their stance on supporting additional foreign languages seems to be that once the demand from authors is there, they will hire the necessary staff needed to police and review such titles. This quite obviously gives rise to a chicken and egg scenario.
So after some searching and sorting through online articles and even website source code, I have a list of language of publication that the major eBook retailers accept.
Some Notes about the languages
Why only include the publishing language options for Amazon, Smashwords and Createspace?
The short answer is twofold, (1) they are the biggest platforms used by self-publishing authors to sell their books and (2) they are open to all authors even the ones from countries you never hear of too often.
The smaller players in the eBook retail game such Apple and Barnes and Noble are considered exclusive for most authors who find themselves born outside the US and UK. Apple will only let MAC users publish their eBooks on the Apple iBookstore while Barnes and Noble (through the NookPress platform) only allows authors within the US to list their titles.
Smashwords ignores these limitations by allowing all authors from around the world and who have never heard of Steve Jobs to have the same reach. (An alternative to Smashwords would be the Draft2Digital platform)
Take the language listings with a pinch of salt.
Amazon aside, an eBook distribution platform such as Smashwords shares your eBook to many stores via a single (not-so-easy to understand) interface. This means that ALL the languages supported by at least one of the stores must be listed as options whilst you are busy setting up your book listing. So don’t be surprised if you choose to publish your Gujarati cookbook through Smashwords and only a single retailer of the many represented eBook retailers will be willing to list your title.
My advice for the author who is considering self-publishing a book in one of the less-heard-of languages would be to email Smashwords/ Createspace first to confirm that at last one store will accept your title.
Amazon via the KDP platform
Here is where the book’s language is selected on the Amazon KDP platform.
- Afrikaans
- Alsatian
- Basque
- Bokmål Norwegian
- Breton
- Catalan
- Cornish
- Corsican
- Danish
- Dutch/Flemish
- Eastern Frisian
- English
- Finnish
- French
- Frisian
- Galician
- German
- Icelandic
- Irish
- Italian
- Japanese
- Luxembourgish
- Manx
- Northern Frisian
- Norwegian
- Nynorsk Norwegian
- Portuguese
- Provençal
- Romansh
- Scots
- Scottish Gaelic
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Welsh
Here is the original article from Amazon that lists the supported languages.
Smashwords
Here is where the book’s language is selected on the Smashwords platform.
- English (dialect unspecified)
- English (Commonwealth/international, Oxford spelling)
- English (Australian dialect)
- English (British dialect)
- English (Canadian dialect)
- English (Indian dialect)
- English (Irish dialect)
- English (New Zealand dialect)
- English (Scottish dialect)
- English (South African dialect)
- English (USA dialect)
- English (Welsh dialect)
- English, simplified (e.g., Basic English, Special English)
- Afrikaans
- Chinese (simplified)
- Chinese (traditional)
- Chinese (writing system unspecified)
- Danish
- Dutch
- Finnish
- French (dialect unspecified)
- French (standard)
- French (Canadian dialects)
- German
- Greek
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Norwegian (Nynorsk)
- Norwegian (Bokmal)
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
- Albanian
- Arabic
- Assamese
- Asturian
- South Azeri (Perso-Arabic script)
- Azerbaijani (North Azeri, Cyrillic script)
- Azerbaijani (North Azeri, Latin script)
- Basque
- Belarusian
- Bengali
- Bosnian
- Breton
- Bulgarian
- Catalan
- Cebuano
- Cherokee
- Czech
- Dinka Agaar
- Dinka Bor
- Dinka Ngok
- Dinka Rek
- Dinka Twic/Twi East
- Esperanto (h-orthography without diacritics)
- Esperanto (original orthography with diacritics)
- Esperanto (unspecified orthography)
- Esperanto (x-orthography without diacritics)
- Estonian
- Faroese
- Georgian
- Scottish Gaelic
- Irish (Gaeilge)
- Galician
- Gujarati
- Hausa (Boko script)
- Hawaiian
- Hebrew
- Croatian
- Serbo-Croatian
- Armenian
- Igbo
- Icelandic
- Ido
- Eastern Canadian Inuit (Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun, syllabic script)
- Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia)
- Javanese
- Greenlandic (Kalaallisut, Tunumiisut, or Inuktun)
- Kannada
- Korean
- Kurdish
- Latin
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Luxembourgish
- Macedonian
- Malayalam
- Marathi
- Malay
- Maltese
- Bishnupriya Manipuri
- Mongolian (Cyrillic script)
- Mongolian (Latin script)
- Neapolitan
- Low Saxon
- Newar/Nepal Bhasa
- Occitan
- Persian
- Lombard
- Piedmontese
- Romansh
- Sicilian
- Scots
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Sesotho
- Serbian
- Swahili
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Tagalog (Filipino)
- Thai
- Tswana
- Ukrainian
- Urdu
- Volapuk
- Welsh
- Wolof (Latin script)
- Xhosa
- Yiddish
- Yoruba
- Zulu
Createspace
Here is where the book’s language is selected on the Createspace print on demand platform.
- Abkhazian
- Afar
- Afrikaans
- Akan
- Albanian
- Amharic
- Arabic
- Aragonese
- Armenian
- Assamese
- Avaric
- Avestan
- Aymara
- Azerbaijani
- Bambara
- Bashkir
- Basque
- Belarusian
- Bengali
- Bihari languages
- Bislama
- Bokmal, Norwegian; Norwegian Bokmal
- Bosnian
- Breton
- Bulgarian
- Burmese
- Catalan; Valencian
- Central Khmer
- Chamorro
- Chechen
- Chichewa; Chewa; Nyanja
- Chinese
- Church Slavic
- Chuvash
- Cornish
- Corsican
- Cree
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Divehi; Dhivehi; Maldivian
- Dutch; Flemish
- Dzongkha
- English
- Esperanto
- Estonian
- Ewe
- Faroese
- Fijian
- Finnish
- French
- Fulah
- Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic
- Galician
- Ganda
- Georgian
- German
- Greek, Modern (1453-)
- Guarani
- Gujarati
- Haitian; Haitian Creole
- Hausa
- Hebrew
- Herero
- Hindi
- Hiri Motu
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Ido
- Igbo
- Indonesian
- Interlingua
- Interlingue; Occidental
- Inuktitut
- Inupiaq
- Irish
- Italian
- Japanese
- Javanese
- Kalaallisut; Greenlandic
- Kannada
- Kanuri
- Kashmiri
- Kazakh
- Kikuyu; Gikuyu
- Kinyarwanda
- Kirghiz; Kyrgyz
- Komi
- Kongo
- Korean
- Kuanyama; Kwanyama
- Kurdish
- Lao
- Latin
- Latvian
- Limburgan; Limburger; Limburgish
- Lingala
- Lithuanian
- Luba-Katanga
- Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch
- Macedonian
- Malagasy
- Malay
- Malayalam
- Maltese
- Manx
- Maori
- Marathi
- Marshallese
- Mongolian
- Nauru
- Navajo; Navaho
- Ndebele, North; North Ndebele
- Ndebele, South; South Ndebele
- Ndonga
- Nepali
- Northern Sami
- Norwegian
- Norwegian Nynorsk; Nynorsk, Norwegian
- Occitan (post 1500); Provencal
- Ojibwa
- Oriya
- Oromo
- Ossetian; Ossetic
- Pali
- Panjabi; Punjabi
- Persian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Pushto; Pashto
- Quechua
- Romanian; Moldavian; Moldovan
- Romansh
- Rundi
- Russian
- Samoan
- Sango
- Sanskrit
- Sardinian
- Serbian
- Shona
- Sichuan Yi; Nuosu
- Sindhi
- Sinhala; Sinhalese
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Somali
- Sotho, Southern
- Spanish; Castilian
- Sundanese
- Swahili
- Swati
- Swedish
- Tagalog
- Tahitian
- Tajik
- Tamil
- Tatar
- Telugu
- Thai
- Tibetan
- Tigrinya
- Tonga (Tonga Islands)
- Tsonga
- Tswana
- Turkish
- Turkmen
- Twi
- Uighur; Uyghur
- Ukrainian
- Urdu
- Uzbek
- Venda
- Vietnamese
- Volapuk
- Walloon
- Welsh
- Western Frisian
- Wolof
- Xhosa
- Yiddish
- Yoruba
- Zhuang; Chuang
- Zulu
What happens if you don’t see your home-language in any of the platforms? Well aside from hiring a translator (assuming your book has been completed) I would bombard the support staff of the various platforms with requests that they start supporting your language. Get your friends, family and fellow authors to join in the emailing, get your language on the radar of the major players, it has to start somewhere.
