Self-published author sells foreign rights to book for $40,000 - ATLANTA. Ga. – Quickly learning that selling his allegory about the search for God from his Web site was not going to make the book a best-seller, a Colorado author changed his focus, selling some foreign rights for $40,000, and in the process, selling the English language rights to a publisher bringing it out in the U.S. and UK as a hardback in December.