The Times of India’s Attempt at Rights Grab

Check out Victoria Strauss’s post on Writer Beware on why it is critical that writers read the fine print carefully before they submit their writing to contests or publishers.

This is what Victoria says of the Write India contest run by the Times of India: “I’ve rarely seen such a greedy rights grab in contest guidelines. If anyone had contacted me to ask about this contest, I would have advised them not to enter.” 

If you’ve not heard about the Times of India writing contest debacle (or even if you have), you should check out this excellent post by Sharath Komarraju.

This all started when Sid Balachandran wrote an emotional Facebook post on the rights grab by The Times of India (see previous post on this blog).

#TimesofIndia #RightsGrab #SidBalachandran #SharathKomaraaju #WriteIndia #WriteIndiaContest

#TraditionalPublisher #contracts and #LiteraryAgents

Here’s an extract from a must-read article on HuffPo:

“One of the things I learned is that publishers often change their contracts to give themselves more favorable terms. Agents who are paying attention pick up on the differences and understand the ramifications. Agents who aren’t, don’t.”

AND

“… … a few year ago, Simon & Schuster removed four sentences from the end of the rights reversion clause. These sentences defined the sales threshold, which states that rights will revert to the author if the number of sales drops under a specified amount. Removing these sentences meant that if the publisher also bought digital rights, the book would in effect never go out of print, and the publisher would own the rights to the work in perpetuity.”

The article states that you can’t necessarily depend on your literary agent to catch these for you, so be vigilant about what you’re signing away.

Click here for the rest of the article.

#Publishing #Contract: what should it say?

An important article by Suneetha Balakrishnan via booksy.in (The Book Industry In India). Click here for the link.

Book #rights in the #ebook Age

When it comes to rights and contracts and publishing contracts, The Passive Guy is my ‘go to’ guy. Some of what he says is reproduced below:

Passive Guy put together the following for the IndieReCon online writers conference which continues through today:

Let’s discuss the rights authors own under their copyrights to their books.Although we could talk a long time about what copyright is, for the purpose of this post, we’ll call it the exclusive legal right of the author of a literary work to reproduce, publish and sell a book for the period during which the copyright is in force. Copyright also includes the right of the author to permit others to do the same thing.Copyright is a collection of different rights. Some of these are called derivative works.

Here’s a definition from the United States Copyright Office:

A derivative work is a work based on or derived from one or more already exist­ing works. Common derivative works include translations, musical arrange­ments, motion picture versions of literary material or plays, art reproductions, abridgments, and condensations of preexisting works. Another common type of derivative work is a “new edition” of a preexisting work in which the edito­rial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an original work.To be copyrightable, a derivative work must incorporate some or all of a preexisting “work” and add new original copyrightable authorship to that work. The derivative work right is often referred to as the adaptation right. The fol­lowing are examples of the many different types of derivative works:

•   A motion picture based on a play or novel
•   A translation of an novel written in English into another language
•   A revision of a previously published book
•   A sculpture based on a drawing
•   A drawing based on a photograph
•   A lithograph based on a painting
•   A drama about John Doe based on the letters and journal entries of John Doe
•   A musical arrangement of a preexisting musical work
•   A new version of an existing computer program
•   An adaptation of a dramatic work
•   A revision of a website

Note that a derivative work includes uses for the work that are developed in the future. Authors who wrote novels long before ebooks were invented still have copyright protection for their work in the form of ebooks.

So, what is a rights grab for the author of a book?

Here’s Passive Guy’s own definition: A rights grab happens when a publisher demands more rights than to print, publish and sell hardcovers, paperbacks and license ebooks.
Period.

Of course, many publishers ask the author to grant many more rights than those three. Common additions are motion picture, television and dramatic rights.

Why does PG not like this?

Does Penguin make movies? Does HarperCollins create stage plays?

Those sorts of things are done by people whose principal business is something other than publishing. Publisher like these sorts of things because all they have to do is contact someone, usually a Hollywood agent, and ask the agent to sell performance rights. Quite often, the author even pays some or all of the agent’s fee through royalty deductions.

That’s a lot less work than editing, printing and promoting books.

An analogous set of rights are translation rights. The right to translate a book into German, French, etc., and sell those books world-wide. There are some exceptions, but quite often, the process is similar to performance rights. The publisher contacts a German publisher or agent and the German publisher does all the work.

Of course, the publisher takes a cut of all of these subsidiary rights, sometimes a very large cut. The author gets what’s left.

So, PG’s standard for what rights an author should grant to a publisher are those that the publisher has the in-house capability of exploiting without involving third-party agents, producers or publishers.

If a book sells well, it will attract people in the movie business and foreign publishers on its own, without the involvement of the US publisher and, if the author retains these rights, he/she keeps all the money.

How does the author know what to do with these non-book rights? Hire an attorney or agent to help. They will charge much less than a publisher will to handle those types of licenses. And the author will be in control of negotiations and the contract terms, not the publisher.

What does rights grab contract language look like? Here’s a short one from a real publishing contract (but not a contract that involves one of PG’s clients):

The Author hereby grants the Publisher the exclusive, worldwide rights to publish, display, reproduce, license, grant subsidiary rights, distribute, and sell the Work, in any and all forms currently, or in the future, known for publishing such material.

Here’s that same contract provision with key terms highlighted:

The Author hereby grants the Publisher the exclusive, worldwide rights to publish, display, reproduce,license, grant subsidiary rights, distribute, and sell the Work, in any and all forms currently, or in the future, known for publishing such material.

Often grants of right are significantly longer than this, but this gives you the idea of the kinds of things to look for.

Why does a publisher need worldwide rights if it only publishes in the US?

Why does a publisher need subsidiary rights if it’s never produced a movie or sold rights to a movie?

Why does a publisher need rights to some unspecified future use of the work when the publisher doesn’t even know what that might be?

If you’re looking for a compromise between a rights grab and PG’s absolutist position about hardcover, paperback and ebooks, here are some ideas:

1.      The publisher has the right to seek movie, TV, etc., deals for a period of time – three years, for example. If no deal is consummated during that time, those rights revert to the author.

2.      The first $1 million derived from the sale or license of any subsidiary right is divided 50/50 between author and publisher and any revenues above that are paid to the author.

3.      The publisher has rights in any countries where it presently has offices and operations with the author retaining rights everywhere else. The countries should be listed.

 

#Book #Contracts 101

Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin are launching a new magazine. They have an article on how to protect your rights as an author. An absolute must read for any other.  Click here for the link.

Book #contracts and #rights grab

How To Read A Book Contract

Rights Grabs and Agents

Two important links for authors, both courtesy the Passive Guy.

Small #Presses and #Contracts: What to Watch Out For

Some small presses are good for a writer, others not so much. How do you tell the difference? Check out the link below for some great advice. If you want to know how to protect yourself as a writer (from bad contracts/agents/publishers) I have lot of posts on my blog. Anyway, click here for the link.

#Book #Contracts #Rights #Royalties

About.com recently ran a series of posts on book contracts, rights and royalties. Worth a read.

Book Rights and Book Royalties

Book Advances and Royalties

Book Contract Basics

More on Book Contracts

 

#Optioning Your #Book for #Film

I came across a terrific post today on Author M. P. McDonald’s site about what questions to ask when Hollywood comes calling – in other words, when someone expresses an interest in filming your book (hey, its been known to happen.)

Click here for the site.

Literary #agents Reinventing Themselves

With so many (inexpensive) options available to authors who are not traditionally published (and even those who are), literary agents are having to reinvent themselves. An interesting post from The Passive Voice.