I managed to break even on the tour by charging small speaking fees, selling my other books after the talks, and staying with friends / Couchsurfing frequently.
The fact that Germany has such strict restrictions was a major factor in wanting to produce in a German edition! They need as much inspiration as they can get to change their system.
True — I hired friends who have translation experience but are not super experienced. That's how I got away with that budget for two translations (+ cover & design services).
If you are thinking of producing books in multilingual editions in the future, you might want to get some independent expert feedback about the quality of the translations your friends produced this time around. Those translations might have been fine. But there are many ways translations can be inadequate, from misunderstandings of subtle but important nuances in the source text to prose that sounds awkward and unnatural in the target language. Such problems can seriously impact both how accurately your message is conveyed and how well your book sells.
I worked as a professional translator (Japanese to English) for twenty years, and I always feel very uncomfortable when a paper or book I've written is translated into a language I can't read.
100% agreed. But as I learned from a friendly agent, publishers are increasingly expecting authors to bring their own marketing platforms (social media followings, blog followers, email newsletters) before offering contracts. Either that or you should have written an article or given a TEDx talk that went viral and thereby demonstrated a market potential.
