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Foreign Rights as well as translations into other languages can be a great way to leverage the value of your manuscript – but don’t expect big numbers right away. Revenue will be an advance and approximately 6 – 10% royalty of the retail price, minus percentage for the agent. It’s also a long-term project as it takes around 18 months until the book is translated and finally available online and in bookstores.
Foreign rights belong to your book’s subsidiary rights. Like other sub-rights, such as audio, movies, book clubs, paperback reprints, electronic rights, foreign rights can be sold and separated from your book’s primary rights – which you totally own anyway as an independent author-publisher.
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Before you sign a contract: Always first contact your national writers’ association for further information and get legal advice from a lawyer who is specialized in copyright. This could save you several thousand dollars – if not more.
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Let’s Start With the Revenue You Can Get from Your Book’s Retail Price:
Earning possibilities for your book.
- If you sell your book on your own website ca. 90 – 95%
- Selling through Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or other online retailers: up to 70%
- Selling your manuscripts to a trade publisher, earns a (small) advance and ca. 8 – 10% royalties – but this will be subtracted from the advance and only if you “earn out” your advance, which means the book is really selling well, you receive royalties.
For most authors the advance is all they really earn.
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If You Want to Let Your Book Translate in World Languages
You can certainly just translate your book and sell it through online retailers worldwide. Most spoken languages beside English (albeit not necessarily e-book readers) are Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, German, Russian, Russian, Portuguese, Bengali, Japanese according to Wikipedia.
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Start With Maximizing Your Foreign Presence – For FREE
To maximize your presence in overseas Amazon Kindle stores, just set up an Author Central account in each of those country-specific sites where your book is available. As Amazon divided the world in single countries, announce your Countdown Deals, new book launches or Free Kindle KDP Days in several languages: Order at http://www.Fiverr.com a short translation of 10 tweets in Spanish, French, German etc. for $5 / 200 words. The countries with the most usage of eReaders, according due to a survey of Bookboon are USA, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark etc.
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A good idea would also be to join ALLI
New rights services are growing up online to help authors meet rights buyers directly without having to travel to a book fair and using technology to extend reach. ALLi now has an arrangement with one of these, Pubmatch. Members have access to Putmatch’s premium service through ALLI (usually $79.99) at the deeply discounted rate of $9.99. Pubmatch will facilitate communication, data warehousing and the simplification of rights marketing for publishers, agents, authors and others, making it the go-to place for the international publishing community to find new titles and new talent.
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International Book Fairs
Do not just turn up at an international book fair, hoping to sell your book. Meetings are arranged well in advance (4-6 months) with acquisitions editors at international publishing houses, to whom new projects are pitched, and new potential publisher customers can be discovered.
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Top Publisher for French Foreign Rights
If you want to talk about foreign rights with a French publisher one of the biggest in the world, Hachette who are also partnering with Phoenix Publishing & Media Group in China and holds a 25% share of Atticus in Russia.
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Top Publisher for Spanish Foreign Rights – Good for U.S.A. too!
Planeta leads the world’s Spanish-language publishing markets in Spain and Latin America. The company has further strongholds in Portugal and France, where it owns Editis, the country’s second-largest group. Grupo Planeta is present in 25 countries, with more than 100 imprints and a catalogue of 15,000 titles.
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Major agencies, specialized in Foreign Rights:
http://nelsonagency.com/foreign-rights/
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Choose your foreign rights agent carefully!
Most agents charge 20% (or sometimes even 25%) on foreign sales. 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. 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?
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There are things to watch when negotiating foreign rights deals – hopefully an agent will keep an eye on these, but it’s worth knowing about it:
- 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 realizing 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 in the US.
- Tax situation in your and the potential publishers country: While there are now many treaties which allow for uninhibited flow of money between countries, you could lose some of your advance to a foreign government’s tax.
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Before signing a contract with an agent or a publisher, how can an author tell if the company is good with foreign rights? Ask about their previous sales! Contact authors who work with that publisher or agent and ask them about their experience. It’s also possible to find out the name of foreign publishers and go to their web sites and see what books they have recently published.
Find out what authors the agency represents overseas, then ask those authors about their own experiences. Again, foreign rights are only a portion of an author’s income, so that’s something to bear in mind. Check your agreement with a translations rights agent carefully. Never, ever! give world rights away as standard, and you should also insist in a large upfront payment.
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Read more:
How to Sell Foreign Rights
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/how-to-sell-foreign-book-rights/
In Gwen Ellery’s article are tips from foreign agents about the cultural difference – something very important! http://www.gwenellery.com/your-books-foreign-rights/
John Penberthy, a successful writer, who searched the internet, found contact addresses of agents in other countries and contacted them directly. 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
Importance of Foreign Rights
http://www.columbinecommunications.com/articles/the-importance-of-foreign-rights/
How You Can Sell your Rights or Split Your Book into Single Articles: https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/why-you-should-split-your-book-apart/
John Kremer sells helpful lists and reports for authors and an e-book with an extensive list of foreign rights agents http://www.bookmarket.com/foreign.htm
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Savvy Writers & e-Books online 
Do You Know Your Rights As An Author?
As an author you own the copyright, and you own all the rights to your work. You can sell – or give away these rights or use in several ways:
First Serial Rights
They can be print or electronic and mean you are selling a publisher the right to publish your article once for the first time. In the case of print rights you are free to immediately sell the piece to an e-magazine or e-zine before print publication and, after the print magazine containing your article hits the newsstand, you are free to sell it again as a reprint to other print markets.
First Serial Rights Electronic
However, first serial electronic rights are different – for sample e-magazines or e-zines buy first rights for an exclusive time period, usually one year (often for the laughable amount of $5 or $10), and at the same time, ask for non-exclusive rights after that. While you can immediately sell the same piece to a print market as a “first print right,” you cannot even post the article on your own website until the year is up. After that you are free to sell the article to other electronic markets as a reprint and post it yourself online everywhere you want.
North American first serial rights
Most Canadian and US freelance authors sell North American first serial rights, reserving the right to sell in other world markets (e.g. Great Britain, Australia, Asia). Specify what type of rights you are selling: First North American Electronic Rights Only.
Second Serial Rights
These are reprint rights and apply to print and electronic markets. Never sell reprint rights, keep them at all costs. Even you will earn less money for each reprint, you can sell your work over and over again.
Subsidiary Rights
Other rights that authors and freelancers hold are subsidiary rights, including, but not limited to movie rights, dramatic, TV and radio rights, audio and other media rights.
However, don’t give up or sell your electronic rights to a traditional book publisher without receiving a large lump sum or at least 50% royalty from the retail price. Most publishing houses are not really experts in e-publishing and often don’t use the electronic rights to your book. But it would prevent you from e-publishing your own work or selling it to a high-royalty-paying e-publisher.
All Rights
In this case the author gives up all future income from the article or book and only retains the copyright. Giving up all your rights should be only considered if a tremendous sum is paid for.
Copyright Protection in the USA and Canada
Copyright protection in Canada is automatic upon the creation of a given work, regardless of the medium of its creation, and it lasts until fifty years after the creator’s death – in the USA seventy years.
Before You Sign Any Contracts:
Always first contact your national authors’ or writers’ associations for further information and get legal advice from a lawyer who is specialized in copyright. This can save you ten thousands of dollars.
Sources:
http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/
http://www.writing-world.com/links/rights.html
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/
http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/ccl/aboutCopyright.html
http://www.cipo.gc.ca
http://www.writersunion.ca
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Posted by ebooksinternational on February 28, 2012 in All things Legal, Book Contracts, comment on posts, Foreign Rights, googling social, Grants, join the conversation, post to public, posting, Publishing Contracts
Tags: All rights, first electronic serial rights, First serial rights, http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/ccl/aboutCopyright.html, http://www.cipo.gc.ca, http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq, http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware, http://www.writersunion.ca, http://www.writing-world.com/links/rights.html, North American first serial rights, Second serial rights, subsidiary rights