Self-publishing a single book is not likely to provide an income to most writers. As noted in another article here on Publish-Yourself though, it does provide a way of earning some money for your time, as well as getting word out about your work to the big whigs in the publishing industry - it certainly worked well for me. Beyond those advantages though, there are other ways of building up your income in self-publishing. One, obviously, is to increase your catalogue of books offered. The other is to sell foreign language rights to your book.
I'm hardly a veteran of publishing. However, I have been lucky enough to see my first book get sold to over ten foreign publishers, in languages ranging from Hebrew and Russian to Portugese and Korean. As such, I think it would be worthwhile to note the opportunities that foreign rights can offer to the self-publisher. Read more »
