The book image above is the cover of GUÍA HACIA LA FELICIDAD, the Spanish edition of my book The Lazy Person's Guide to Happiness published by San Pablo in Argentina.

I sold the foreign rights myself without the use of an agent or North American publisher. 

Apparently a book published in the U.S. and Canada has about a one in twelve chance of selling translation rights to even one foreign publisher.

Guess that I am doing okay now that I have 100 book deals with publishers around the world.

Given that I have 13 books, each of my books has an average of 7 book deals whereas the average book published in North America has less than 1/10th of a book deal. This means that my average book has been 70 times as successful in the foreign-rights sales field as as the average book published in North America.

The cool thing is that I have never gone to the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany where a lot of book rights deals are supposed to be made.

I sell foreign rights in many ways.

Some American publishers are totally amazed when I contact them about a book that has not yet been published in English but for which I have already sold two, three, or even four foreign rights. To this day I have books such as Look Ma; Life's Easy, which now has 5 foreign sales (French, Korean, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish) but which has not been published in English.

In fact, two or threee greedy American publishers even got mad at me and said they refuse to deal with authors who have already sold foreign rights to a book (because these American publishers want to control foreign rights sales and end up giving the authors much, much less than I receive in advances and royalties.) 

 This is an e-mail that I received on March 13, 2009 from an agent in Bulgaria for my last 3 book deals that jumped my total from 97 book deals to 100 books deals:

Dear Ernie Zelinski , I am happy that the biggest and most prestigeous non-fiction inspirational book publisher in the country KIBEA are now ready to make an offer for three of your books:

 
•  The Joy of Not Working
• The Lazy Person's Guide to Success:
• 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting

Please check http://www.kibea.net/

You will be in the company of Jack Canfield, Deepack Chopra, Richard Carson, Louis Hay, Joe Vitale and many other important inspirational authors.

I hope the offer will be acceptable for you.

Please let me know how you wish to proceed?

Kind regards,

Kat. .. . . .

A . . . . AGENCY, Bulgaria

This offer for 3 of my books will earn me only about $4500 in advances after the Bulgarian agent takes 10 percent.

But this is a lot more than if an American publisher was controlling foreign rights sales.

What's more, I get the advances within two or three months whereas with an American publisher, whatever was allocated to me would be first applied against the advance for the English edition. If anything was left, I may have to wait up to year or so to get it.

Incidentally, I am now working on my next 100 book deals.  

With the release of Career Success Without a Real Job, in April, I hope to get at least 5 more book deals before the end of the year.

 

Note: How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free and Career Success Without a Real Job, two great business prom giveaways by VIP Books are now distributed by the National Book Network.

See this Great Review of How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free