How to Sell Foreign Book Rights

.

.

It is not that easy to sell your foreign rights without an agent or a publisher, but it’s not impossible. Women’s fiction author Kay Raymer did the whole agent query routine in 2000, but nobody would look at her novel, Hannah Street. So she sent the manuscript to her attorney, who happened to know someone at Bertelsmann / Germany. Bertelsmann made an offer on the book, and her lawyer helped arrange the contract. As a result, Raymer’s first novel appeared in Germany in 2001, a paperback original called Das Rosenhaus. Read more in Gwen Ellery’s article.

Most agents charge 20% (or sometimes even 25%) on foreign sales (including British and translations).
This 20% rate is justified because normally two agents are involved (the second one being in the foreign country), and they end up splitting the commission.

You should never agree to be paying over 25% commissions for any type of sale.
Note that your foreign sales will likely be subject to a local withholding tax (10% is common), and that all of that tax burden will be borne by you (that is, the agent will take his or her commission off the pre-tax gross).

If you are not represented already, why not try to find agents or even publishers yourself in other countries, especially if you speak more than one language?
I just found a blog post from a successful writer, who did just that: searched the internet, found contact addresses of agents in other countries and contacted them. He wrote:

“How does one sell rights in the international marketplace?
My first foreign rights sales occurred as a result of Book Expo America, where for a small fee my book was displayed in a co-op booth.  Although the book didn’t take Book Expo by storm — as I somehow thought it would — it received interest from and I sold translation rights to publishers in Mexico, Poland and Nigeria.  If publishers in such diverse countries and cultures wanted the book, I was sure publishers in other countries would also want it.”   Read the whole article here: http://axiomawards.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/selling-foreign-rights-around-the-world/

Morris Rosenthal gives also great, detailed tips in his article about book contracts.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/contract.htm

.

<><><><><>

.

.

If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book heavily promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only a “token” of $1 / day for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/seminar

Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 730 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://pinterest.com/111publishing/

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

.

.
Hyper Smash

Pingates

 

11 Reasons Why You Should Offer Print Books Too

.

.

Last October I wrote a blog post why every author should offer print versions of their e-books. 
In the meantime I discovered even more reasons to have at least a small amount of printed books
listed.  Read on:

E-book authors might be happy with their sales on Amazon, Apple, Kobo or Barnes & Noble. You might have even turned it into an audio book. But the questions for a “real” book, paper back or hard-cover copy from conservative friends or elderly family members are nagging… And wouldn’t it be nice to walk into a Chapters or Baker & Taylor or one of these rare independent book shops and see your book in the shelf?

You will not earn a fortune, not even a living, but for a couple of months it is a nice pocket change. Only months… yes, because longer than this, barely any book will stay in the book store, unless it really is a bestseller and gets re-printed.

If you go the indie route and choose for sample the POD services and worldwide distribution through Lightning Source, (provided you have at least 3 books to be considered a small publisher) your book is printed on demand and will never get discarded (good: no-return-policy in POD worldwide distribution). See my blog from last month How to Distribute Your Book Worldwide.
.

All you need is the spine / back of your cover designed and professionally formatted (graphic designer, book designer, lay-outer). To work with Lightning Source you need to have at least three books to be considered a publisher and you will not receive technical help. Using CreateSpace as a POD service is the better choice if you are not a computer geek and you have less than three books.
.

Due to the high print-on-demand printing costs, you need to sell a 180-page fiction book for more than $10 to make any profit at all. Still you don’t make real money with your paper book, unless you are a marketing pro, very entrepreneurial and able to organize a small publisher business and invest in your written work and in letterpress print.
.

Role models are enough out there and they will tell you exactly how to do start as a real publisher with their books and blogs – from Dan Poynter, Aaron Shephard to John Kremer, Joanna Penn and Joel Friedman. Author David Gaughran wrote in one of his blogs: Making Money from Paperbacks  ”I was really slow to see the potential in print, and it was probably the biggest mistake I made over the last year.”
.

But then again: Why on earth should you go with a paper edition of your e-book?

1. The majority of book buyers still chooses printed books at the moment (that will change)
2. You can give out review copies to newspaper/magazine or book blog reviewers
3. To be hosted at local media / TV interviewers who want to show a copy of your book
4. To sell your book easier to libraries
5. To participate in a Goodreads giveaway
6. To sell your book to those who really don’t want an e-Reader or just love paper books
7. If you write non-fiction it is almost a must to offer it in paper as well
8. You have an ISBN number and can get listed with Bowker at worldwide bookstores
9. Physical books are just nicer to give on Christmas – unless you put an e-book on a new e-Reader and wrap it
10. To sell more e-books! Yes – because they seem to cost so much less in comparison…
11. To list your book in more categories / genres on Amazon: per book type you are allowed to choose two categories / genres. Two print and two digital versions – which increases your books’ visibility and also shows you exactly in which genre you have the most success.
    .

And last but not least: Think hurricanes or other reasons for power outage. I know e-Readers have batteries. But guess what: just yesterday my Kindle went dead and needed to be re-charged! With heavy thunderstorms around the house due to hurricane “Sandy”, I did not want to plug it in – and instead I read a paper book surrounded by lots of solar lamps and candles.

.
<><><><><>
.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 570 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Follow on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks, Doris

.

.

.
Hyper Smash

Pingates

 

Part 2 – Great Opportunity for Authors: Foreign Right Sales

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

 

see also Part 1 here

 

How does a foreign rights contract work?
The agent usually has a standard contract which she prepares and sends to both parties for signatures, so the foreign contracts you will see are generally quite similar. The key factors, of course, are the amount of the non-refundable advance and the royalty rate, generally minimum of 7-8% on foreign rights, which should be applied to the retail price.

Royalties are deducted from the advance. Once the advance is paid back, the publisher makes royalty payments. Most publishers calculate royalties following the end of each calendar year, though some do so semi-annually. Payments are due a quarter later. The contract should have a finite term, usually five years. If the book proves to be big with good longevity, it can go back on the market at the end of the term for much better terms.

One thing that is absolutely critical is that the publisher provides a computerized statement showing sales, returns, etc. via postal mail to the author for each period. If figures are provided any other way (i.e. via email), it is too easy to fudge them. The language and geographic territory licensed should be specified. And the number of complimentary books provided to the author should be specified. The agent’s commission should be identified. Another thing is to limit rights to book publishing only. Always retain all other rights or sell them for top dollar advances.

Be aware: You are dealing with international countries.
Don’t email the manuscript file until you received the advance in full. But for royalties, once the advance is paid back, it can be dicey, depending upon the quality of the agents and size of the publishers you are working with. Publishers in Asia and Eastern Europe can be more problematic, depending on their size and reputation and how they treat international copyright agreements.

Even if the publisher does comply, they send the money to the agent, who is supposed to send it on to you, so there’s an extra layer of opportunity for graft. They know that you have no leverage; who’s going to spend thousands of dollars hiring lawyers in a country halfway around the world unless there are clearly large royalties at stake? The only leverage you have is if you have an American co-agent involved because the foreign co-agent’s reputation is at stake within the international agent community. Even then, many American co-agents expect only to receive their share of the advance and spend little, if any effort to collect royalties unless they are substantial. The moral of the story: The larger and more established the agency and publisher, the better chance you have of getting paid royalties when your advance is depleted. Try to get the highest advance possible and rather lower royalties.

Before you sign the publishing contract:
Morris Rosenthal gave in his guest blogging article “Publisher Book Contracts” at Fonerbooks.com the following advice:

“Most new authors fail to retain legal counsel before signing their first book contract, and actually depend on the acquisitions editor to tell them what’s fair and normal for the publisher to request. This creates an excellent negotiating position for the publisher and a horrible one for the author. Unfortunately, publishers really take advantage.

Author advocacy organizations can be a good source for publishing contract advice, but the catch is you usually have to be a published writer before you can join. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of joining a prestigious author guild after publishing a trade book, sending them the publisher’s book contract for your next edition for free legal review, and hearing something like, “Oh, you never should have signed the first contract. Now you’re stuck with it forever.”

“The contractual relationship between the author and the publisher is based on what’s written in the signed book contract, not on implicit understandings. Even experienced authors and agents sometime make the mistake of concentrating on the money and not paying enough attention to the clauses that protect the author’s rights. All contract terms are negotiable, though acquisitions editors like to pretend they have a standard publishing contract that all their authors are happy to sign. A brief summary of standard trade publisher contract terms follows, but it’s by no means all-inclusive: I advise everyone who is looking at a contract signing to consult a lawyer.”

There are some things to watch when negotiating foreign rights deals – hopefully an agent will keep an eye on these, but it’s worth having some idea yourself:

• Term of the deal.
  Five years is most common, anything longer then you should be expecting a premium from the publisher.
• Country / Territory for the contract
  You might sign away Portuguese language rights without realising that it will include publication in Brazil (and Mozambique, Angola, Macau, Cape Verde etc). Also, giving worldwide Spanish language rights could cause friction with any United States publishing deal, as there is a large Spanish reading audience there.
• Tax situation in your and the potential publishers country.
  While there are now many treaties which allow for uninhibited flow of monies between nations, you could be badly caught out in some cases, and lose most of your advance to a foreign government’s tax.

John Kremer has a bunch of helpful lists and reports for authors, first of all an e-book for an extensive list of foreign book agents (300+) as well as more than a thousand literary agents in the U.S. and Canada. It’s an immediately downloadable report covering 1,400 agents (with address, phone, email, website, notes on some books they’ve sold rights to, etc.).  Instead of spending time researching foreign rights agents, you can order it for only $6.00, download it right away, and go to work, contacting the best agents in every country.

Foreign Book Distributors, Wholesalers, & Sales Reps — This report features more than 345 companies that provide foreign distribution or sales representation and also includes a sample of a foreign distribution contract.

.

.

.
Hyper Smash

 

The Secret of Successful Authors

 

John Kremers "Self-Publishing Hall of Fame"

In his book “Self-Publishing Hall of Fame”   author John Kremer, THE book marketing expert, features such famous and successful authors as Margaret Atwood, Lord Byron, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, John Muir, Anais Nin, Marcel Proust, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, Julia Cameron and Ken Harper.

He writes: “Self-publishing was once considered as bad as vanity publishing, but with so many self-published successes in the past few years, it is now possible to self-publish with respect. Publishers Weekly will now look at self-published books, something they would never have done five or ten years ago. “Gone are the days,” wrote Publishers Weekly rights columnist Paul Nathan, “when self-publishing was virtually synonymous with self-defeating.”

And now with the advent of print-on-demand publishing, it’s possible to self-publish books at little cost. POD publishing or self-publishing (Please Note: they are not the same thing!) are excellent ways to test the market for a book, establish that market, and even build the market to such an extent that an author can sell the reprint rights to a much larger book publisher for a very good advance. Indeed, many larger book publishers now scour the shelves and the Internet for self-published and POD books that could fit their publishing program. Self publishing has become respectable again.” Check out these authors above and some of their titles here:

• Walden
• War and Peace
• The Lazy Person’s Guide to Success
• How I Retired at 26
• Life’s Greatest Lessons
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Old Farmer’s Almanac
• The Elements of Style
• Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream
• The Cliffhanger
• Don Juan
• The Artist’s Way
• One of Ours
• Wall Street Money Machine
• What to Do When You’re Expecting
• Spartacus
• Eat First—You Don’t Know What They’ll Give You
• Work Your Way Around the World
• A Time to Kill
• Give Me My Father’s Body: The Story of Minik, the New York Eskimo
• The Sun Also Rises
• M*A*S*H
• 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth
• Ulysses
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
• The Raven

Why hunt for a publisher if you can self-publish? Marketing tips galore are found on John Kremers website.