How authors can use publication rights to help maximise their income
Troubador Publishing
Helping serious authors get their books published, distributed and sold to the market
Lynette Owen , a rights consultant for the Independent Publishers Guild , shares how you can use subsidiary rights from your books to your benefit. Find out more in her session at the Self-Publishing Conference (Leicester, April 22, 2023)
Lynette Owen started her publishing career selling rights at Cambridge University Press , then worked at Pitman Publishing and Marshall Cavendish before joining Longman Group Ltd (now Pearson ) where she spent most of her career, latterly as Copyright Director.?She now works as an independent consultant.?She has run numerous courses on copyright and licensing, both in the UK and abroad. She is the author of Selling Rights (8/e, Routledge, 2019) and is the General Editor of and a contributor to Clark's Publishing Agreements: A Book of Precedents (Bloomsbury Professional, 2022). In 2003 she received the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award; in 2009 she was awarded an OBE for services to publishing and International Trade, and in 2018 received the IPG Award for Services to Independent Publishers.
Interview Q&A
Q: What are publication rights in a nutshell for those who are unaware?
A: Publication rights are the rights (normally held by the author as creator) either to publish themselves or to license or assign publication rights to a publisher to enable them to publish that author's work. The rights granted to a publisher can be defined in a variety of ways – exclusive or non-exclusive, for publication in one or more specified formats, for publication in an agreed geographical territory or territories, and for an agreed period of time. Rights are normally granted in return for an agreed model of payment to the author.
Allied to publication rights are a range of subsidiary rights, whereby the author as self-publisher or the publisher to whom the author grants those rights are able to make sublicensing agreements with third parties, e.g. to a US publisher for an American edition, to a foreign language publisher for a translated edition, to a newspaper for pre-publication extract rights etc. Any such arrangements would then involve direct payment from the licensee to the author if the author is self-published or to the publisher controlling the rights who would then retain an agreed share of the revenue for handling the arrangements and pay the balance to the author.
Q: When should authors be looking at their rights?
A: Authors need to think about their rights early in order to decide whether to self-publish and make all the arrangements themselves, or whether to make arrangements with a publisher for publication and handling of an agreed range of subsidiary rights. The range of subsidiary rights granted may depend on what the publisher can realistically handle and on reaching a satisfactory financial agreement. Authors seeking a publisher may also wish to consider if it would be preferable to be represented by a literary agent as many publishers (particularly large publishers in the trade sector) will not consider unsolicited proposals or manuscripts. Regarding subsidiary rights, of course not all publications have licensing possibilities. Whether or not to grant a broad range of rights to a publisher will depend on which they can realistically handle; if an agent is involved, they may wish to retain some categories of rights to handle themselves rather than grant them to the publisher.
Q: How do authors know what rights belong to them or their publisher?
A: The exact list of rights granted to the publisher (and the share of any resulting revenue to be paid to the author) should be discussed and agreed upon prior to signing the contract with the publisher so the author is clear on what the publisher is authorised to handle. The publisher should be prepared to explain any unclear areas to the author. That said, authors have an obligation to remember what has been agreed upon in the finalised contract – it's surprising how many authors fail to reread their contract when an issue arises!
Q: You’ve had a long, varied career in this area – do you see mistakes authors often make that you wish they knew more about?
A: As mentioned above, it is sometimes the case that authors contracted to a publisher do not reread their contracts carefully and may initiate or even finalise deals which should have been referred to the publisher to handle. Another area is when authors have unrealistic expectations of what the publisher can achieve in terms of timing and revenue for sublicence deals. It can take time to place rights, particularly for an author's debut work. For non-fiction titles, licensing possibilities may arise some time after publication if the subject matter later becomes a popular trend in some markets. Another key point for authors to appreciate is that market conditions dictate what a licensee is able to pay for the rights – the print run and price of the licensed edition will be crucial. Some authors have had unrealistic expectations, e.g. expecting Chinese or Arabic translations to have print runs in the millions because of the population size – in reality, print runs may be very modest in those markets. To my mind, a modest deal with a publisher in Estonia is just as worthwhile pursuing as a larger deal in markets such as France and Germany.
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Another key point is that inexperienced authors may not realise what is involved in exploiting subsidiary rights. Apart from analysing which titles have licensing possibilities, literary agents or rights staff within publishing houses have to build up a detailed knowledge of markets and relations with potential licensing partners. They need excellent negotiating skills to secure the best licence deals, and the ability to draw up appropriate contracts to cover each licencing deal. They need to monitor that the licensee fulfils all their commitments to make payments and publish on time, and to maintain financial records throughout the life of the licence. Few authors have either the time or the resources to handle these functions themselves.
Q: You’ve won the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award, an OBE for services to Publishing and International Trade, and an IPG Award for Services to Independent Publishers. Congratulations! The question is, what’s next for you?
A: As to what is next for me, I hope that 2023 will enable me to return to the level of travel I was able to undertake prior to the pandemic. One major task will be to start work on the next (9th) edition of my Selling Rights book for Routledge – always a daunting task but more so in that the last edition was published just before the pandemic. Many of the techniques for rights selling during the pandemic (Skype, Zoom or Teams calls with licensees) are likely to survive, and now that international book fairs can be held again, many of them will also offer online components and services. I have already returned to running training courses in person as well as online, and to lecturing to university publishing degree students.
Lynette Owen at the Self-Publishing Conference
Catch Lynette Owen exploring these rights in detail at the Self-Publishing Conference.
Exploiting subsidiary rights in literary works can be a welcome additional source of revenue for authors, but what opportunities might they offer and should authors consider exploiting those rights themselves? Lynette Owen offers an overview of 'rights', and the practicalities involved in dealing with them.
About the Self-Publishing Conference
The Self-Publishing Conference is the UK’s longest-established self-publishing event, offering authors a chance to find out about a wide range of publishing options, to hear from and question those who work within the thriving self-publishing world, and to network with fellow authors, many of whom will already be experienced self-publishers.
In 2023, the event will take place at the College Court Conference Centre, Leicester, UK on April 22nd.