One of my old friends (meaning, my age!) recently sent me an email that read: "Did you know that there is another Todd Outcalt out there who is writing books in Portuguese? I found this book online and wondered what it was about."
Attached was a jpeg file of a book cover, in Portuguese.
"Actually," I wrote back, "that's me. That the Portuguese translation of The Best Things in Life Are Free."
Portuguese, you say? Yeah, Portuguese. Don't ask me how publishers make these decisions or why some titles get translated into, say, Spanish, while others appear in Swahili. I'm not attune to the gentle swirlies of the publishing biz and the decisions that emerge after a publisher plops the seat down.
And there are other questions, too. People always want to know: how much do you make from the Portuguese translation? How large are the checks that are rolling in from Brazil and Portugal? Answer: I don't get checks from translations and I've never made any money from a translation of one of my books. Other writers might. But not me. I've been a bozo without an agent and the publishers get to keep all of this foreign currency.
How many copies has the Portuguese translation sold? Is it a bestseller in South America? Have no idea. For all I know, the Portuguese translation (despite it's proliferation on Portuguese websites) may have sold as well as its English counterpart. In other words, about a dozen copies, all of which my family purchased for half price at Costco.
No, friends, there's no joy in Mudville, nor in Buenes Aires either. And I have no idea how I'd go about trading Portuguese currency for a handful of American pocket change.
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