I make 20 cents per book in India (I share everything about foreign rights for The Pathless Path)
Hey there!
Welcome to this tiny experiment, a new publication where I can share my musings, explorations, and data from publishing my own books. This will be a semi-regular publication where I’ll share inspired posts, reflections, and updates on my publishing journey.
A quick intro: I enjoy thinking about this industry
If you’re new here, I’ve been writing on and off about my publishing adventures over the last few years since launching The Pathless Path in 2022. As a former consultant, I am fascinated by the inner workings of the publishing industry and have spent considerable time writing about and experimenting in this relatively tiny but still massive space.
One thing that has surprised me is how many people have reached out about this writing. They typically say two things: Wow, I didn’t realize publishing a book was this accessible, or even better to hear, Now I am going to attempt to write a book.
As I like to say, a book is literally a PDF. That’s it. A PDF interior file and a PDF cover.
Finally, a lot of people think I’m in some kind of pseudo-debate, arguing for self-publishing over traditional publishing. While leaning into this beef would be better for attention, I don’t actually see it that way. Here are a few things I believe:
The standard US publishing deal is a terrible deal for most writers
The big publishing giants are not incentivized primarily to create the best books; they are incentivized by other aims
If a self-published book is successful, you will almost undoubtedly work with traditional publishers to some degree. I am working with several traditional publishers abroad for my foreign deals and am also considering multiple partnerships right now to access more markets
I have much more writing on my site (linked at the bottom), but I’d love to hear in the comments: What should I write about here? What questions do you have?
Why a new publication?
My writing on the publishing industry and my own experiments in it seem a bit separate from what I like writing about on the main newsletter.
In addition, this felt like a fun experiment and starting a new publication gives me more space to share about the publishing world here.
Most of my previous writing I’ve posted to my blog on the Pathless Path website.
But felt this might be a little more shareable.
I didn’t know about foreign rights deals when I published
When I published The Pathless Path, I didn’t think it was headed anywhere big. I was hoping for about 1k sales, so I’d pay off my $7k investment in the book.
As the book kept selling, I started receiving random emails from foreign publishers. A guy from Malaysia said he wanted to sell my English version in Malaysia. A random email from Russia that I was sure was a scam. A blogger in Vietnam who wanted to publish the book on his site. I didn’t quite know how to navigate this. I asked friends like 📚 David Kadavy, author who informed me that yes, this is normal, and that foreign rights are basically seen as “found money.” Easy money. Take the deal, who knows what will happen?
This was more or less my approach at first. The Russia deal was the only one that materialized at first, and I did the deal, not knowing what to expect. I’m actually a huge fan of that cover, as you can see some of the various editions here:
At a high level my reflections on foreign rights
Across all these versions, I earn about 5-25x less than I do on my English self-published version
Many countries still sell high rates of print books meaning self-publishing is not as promising
Despite we’ve had a lot of luck self-publishing Angie’s digital editions in Taiwan with her launch and could potentially do more on our own in the future.
Market access is a new puzzle in every country and it is very hard to sell books in a new place without building some local connections, relationships and support
Many of the follow-on opportunities in each country are hard to understand before participating in that market
In the last two years, foreign sales have started and increased over time (this is still missing India sales for 2025), and may outpace original edition sales this year or next. I still don’t quite know how to think about this in terms of connecting with various global audiences.
In total, I’ve done eight deals for $23k. I've gotten about $15k of that after taxes and agent fees. Most came AFTER I started working with an agent.
An overview of the deals:
India: Manjul Publishing: $5,500 advance, $3,256 my cut
Worldwide (Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi): Manjul Publishing: $1,000 advance, $592 my cut
Simplified Chinese Worldwide ex. Taiwan/HK/Macao: Beijing Hanzi Workshop Culture Media — $5,000 advance, $2,667 my cut
Traditional Chinese Worldwide ex. Mainland China: Come Together Press — $4,000 advance, $1,994 my cut
Russia: Eksmo — $2,000 advance, $2,000 my cut minus stripe fees
Malaysia: ACE Premier — $1,500 advance, $1,200 my cut
Yet to be published
Worldwide French, Les Éditions La Comédie Française, $1,500 advance, $1,200 my cut
Spanish Worldwide: Ediciones La Llave — $2,500 advance, $2,000 my cut
Of these, most came after I started working with Dropcap, a great team that specifically works with indie authors like me. They also represent a couple of friends, Lawrence Yeo and Justin Moore, who has been fun to root for their foreign rights too.
Before working with Dropcap, I had a short stint of trying to approach publishers myself, mostly failing to get any response, and then a second agent who I briefly worked with but then ended the relationship after finding Dropcap. If my book was much bigger, I might have been able to hack it on my own but from what I can tell having an agent in this space is a no-brainer. There are just too many industry norms, cultural nuances, and unspoken taboos for anyone to figure out on their own.
Overall, a couple things I’ve learned:
The foreign rights world is a highly gated industry and operates on relationships built through informal connections and annual meetings at several global book conferences (Frankfurt, London, Guadalajara, among others).
The royalties I was offered were higher after working with Dropcap than with an earlier agent I trialed for several months, and I got better terms. I went from a $2k deal with HarperCollins India to $6,500 for multiple versions. This was great.
Every country has its own nuances. In the US, ebooks and audiobooks make up 70% of my sales, but in other parts of the world this is flipped. It is still very early for digital versions abroad and this is why print in-store distribution is so vital.
Even when you sign a deal, it is still a black box
So far, there has been very little transparency into the process, and it’s been hard to get in touch with the Publishers to see if I could support the launches. Some various experiences I’ve had:
I didn’t know the book was published in Russia, China, or India until months later via my own searching or seeing people posted the book online
I had people text me photos of the book in a Singapore and Bangkok bookstore, but I had no idea how it got there because I didn’t have distribution in those places. After some digging, I realized that the Malaysian distributor was sending some books to those places. While it wasn’t in the agreement, I agreed to let him continue distributing there because I wouldn’t otherwise have books there.
The French publisher did not meet the deadline to publish the book. I had to have my agent reach out, and it seems like they agreed on a six-month extension. I am not sure when it is launching still
The sales info only comes if you ask for it. I had to request info from my agent for India and Taiwan. I had to reach out to get info from Russia and Malaysia.
In India, I make about $0.20 per book
Before signing a deal in India I was doing print-on-demand via Pothi, a self-publishing platform, and then did a short stint working with a hybrid publisher Think Tank Books (a hybrid publisher) to get my book into bookstores. I sold about 2,000 books between those two experiments but still signed with a traditional publisher because they just have much better distribution into bookstores and with authors.
I don’t have my 2025-2026 data yet, but the initial data from India is from when it launched in September 2024 to March 2025. For seven months this feels pretty good!
Total copies: 4,795 (4,791 print + 4 ebooks)
Total sales: ₹1,912,197 (~$20,205 to publisher)
Royalty earned: ₹150,633.84 (~$1,592)
Most of this is my standard royalty, 8% of the list price rate
Advance paid: ₹465,245 (~$4,915 in today’s dollars)
Unearned balance: ₹314,611.16 (~$3,324)
Based on this, I made about $0.33 per book. If you factor in agents’ fees and taxes, my adjusted take per book is about $0.20 per book. So to “earn out” my advance and start getting royalty payments, I will need to sell about 16,620 books. The term of this agreement is only until May 2029, though, so I’d need to do it before then. At that point, the rights revert to me automatically (typical for foreign rights deals, especially with Dropcap).
I am not sure what happens at that point because I haven’t had a deal expire.
Right now I’m not too worried about money in India. Books sell for about $4-5 a book so its hard to make money even if you were doing it by yourself. But I’m pretty bullish on India as an english language market (it’s literally the biggest in the world) and am glad I’ll have longer term flexibility to experiment in the space once my rights revert.
In Taiwan, I earned out my advance in six months! After everyone gets their take, I’m getting about $0.58 per book
Taiwan is a pretty special deal for me. As you may know, my wife is Taiwanese and my personal journey with writing deepened after moving here in 2018.
This version came out in July 2025 and put a lot of energy into sneaking forcing my way into the promotion and marketing planning. I had to send several emails and reminders to both my agent and the co-agent suggesting that I am very willing to do almost anything in Taiwan. My reasoning for this was simple:
I plan on living here the next few years and want to make friends. My readers are some of my favorite people.
I thought it would be really fun and I’d learn a lot. I genuinely love this place and want to learn more about it.
Angie’s book was going to come out after my launch and many of my readers would also be a fan of hers.
Tons of cool stuff emerged including a custom copy we launched exclusively at Books.com.tw flagship store, in-person book events with 50+ people both in Taipei and Hong Kong, several podcasts and event invitations, and many new friends. And it’s sold almost 5k copies in the first seven months.
Summary stats from those first months:
Total copies: 4,894 (3,159 print + 1,735 ebooks)
Total sales: NT$1,626,708 (~$52,200 to publisher)
Royalty earned: NT$154,589 (~$4,960)
6% print royalty on the 1–5,000 copy tier, 25% on ebook net sales
Advance paid: NT$130,120 (~$4,180)
Unearned balance: NT$0 — earned out, with NT$24,469 (~$785) in fresh royalties this period
One thing to note here is that there are multiple players who get a cut in this deal. First the Taiwanese agent. They take 10% off the top. Then Taiwan gets a cut (a tiny fraction compared to TSMC’s contribution). 20% to them. And then finally 20% to my agent.
Here’s how much I make on a single book sale on average
1 paperback book sells for 420 NTD ($13.35) or 1 ebook for average 172 NTD ($5.47)
I get 6% of list price for print ($0.80) or 25% ($1.37) of ebooks
With 2/3rds paperback, I get about $1.00 per copy
Subtract co-agent fee and I’m at $0.90
Subtract tax and I’m at $0.72
Subtract local agent fee and I’m at $0.58 per book in my pocket on average
This might seem a little shocking but this is the typical math you are looking at with traditional publishing around the world.
One upside of this is that this plants tons of seeds of serendipity in a country where I’m hopefully going to build connections and continue to experiment, especially pursuing projects with my wife.
One serendipitous connection already emerged out of this. I also connected with PressPlay, which licensed my Think Like A Strategy Consultant course who has localized it for Taiwan. As part of the process, they had me in their office for a photo shoot (first time I’ve gotten makeup done) and they connected me with many top podcasters. The PressPlay team is fantastic and they have genuinely repackaged my course in a great way. I also got a bunch of photos and videos I can repurpose in the future.
Another was selling the Rights to Good Work in Taiwan as well. Given the reception for the Pathless Path in Taiwan, Good Work may end up selling more copies in Taiwan than the US, so this will be pretty interesting to watch.
We’ll have to see how much I make from these additional experiments but it’s definitely going to be more than the book. We will see!
Some other quick data points: Russia & Malaysia
$0.34 a copy on the Russian edition (Невидимый сценарий жизни) — Jul 2024 to Dec 2025
Total copies: 2,063 (1,918 print + 81 ebook + 64 audio)
Total sales: ~₽490,852 print at list (~$5,960) + ~$451 ebook/audio (~$6,410 total retail value)
Royalty earned: $708.75 (or about
10% of list price on print, 25% on ebook and audio
Advance paid: $2,000 (USD-denominated contract, signed Feb 2024)
Unearned balance: $1,291.25 (~35% earned out so far)
I’ve never connected with a single person that’s read the Russian edition, though i do see it has a decent number of reviews on Russian book sites.
$1.50 per Malaysia edition
Total copies: 258 (print only)
Price: MYR 59.90 per copy
Total sales: MYR 15,454 (~$3,920)
Royalty earned: MYR 1,545.42 (~$392), 10% of list price
Advance paid: $1,500 USD (MYR 5,910 at signing rate of ~3.94)
Unearned balance: MYR 4,364.58 (~$1,108)
French and Spanish coming soon!
Once we hit these two we are hitting a lot of the most popular languages with English, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Hindi.
I’m especially excited for the Spain deal as part of the offer included them wanting to fly me out for launch in Barcelona next January. The publisher seems pretty hands on (hits many of the items below) and we’ve corresponded several times. I’m really excited for Spanish to be available around the world!
What I wish I knew when I started
While I’m not sure I could have landed an agent when I published, I wish I had known about my options much earlier. I had a huge spike at the end of year one that I wasn’t prepared for but at that point had already sold over 7,500 books so theoretically could have had some interest and deals signed much earlier.
Wishlist for foreign publishers
This isn’t really a complaint list as I just sense there is so much potential for foreign rights. For the most part, authors seem to treat these deals as “found money” and don’t really worry about the execution, upside, or opportunities that might come after a book.
To me, I see every single book version that comes out as a new marketing opportunity and another way to connect with people around the world.
I suspect with increased AI translation, authors, especially in English, will have increasing opportunities to localize their work and make money in different markets.
Here’s my wish list for an ideal foreign rights partner:
Tell the author when the book is supposed to launch
Offer to have the writer write a custom intro for the country to add context or a personal touch
Send cover/title/translation updates before publication
Share a basic launch plan
Ask if the author wants to help promote locally (I think publishers may be surprised at how much authors would do for free on their own time).
Create easy sharing of data and sales updates (this is for the whole industry, I wish there was API access to this stuff)
Let authors invest extra in cover design, podcast outreach, ads, events, or review copies if they want to co-invest
If you’re my ideal foreign publisher match, hmu!
Follow along, also I share all my data on my site
You can see all this on my deal data and updates on my website here.
Questions welcome!