Subsidiary Rights

Subsidiary Rights, and Why They’re Important in Contract Negotiations

Greg Victoroff, Esq. — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 16:06:06 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Greg Victoroff, Esq. on 3/17/2023 4:06:06 PM

All of the different rights associated with publishing a book can be confusing. Before signing any kind of contract, it's crucial you understand these rights and that you ensure you maintain any rights that could benefit you in the future. Per attorney Greg Victoroff, an author's "subsidiary rights" refer to a derivative work based on or adapted from the original book. This means, if you take the content of your book and use it in a different medium, you are practicing your subsidiary rights. This can include audiobooks, movie adaptations, translations, foreign rights, and more. It's important to check the fine print of any publishing contract to make sure you are not granting these subsidiary rights to your publisher, especially if they don't plan to do anything with these rights.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../SubsidiaryRightsandWhyTheyreImportantinContractNegotiations.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video

Subsidiary Rights, and Why They’re Important in Contract Negotiations

Greg Victoroff, Esq. — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 15:51:15 GMT

Revision 1 posted to Subsidiary Rights by Greg Victoroff, Esq. on 3/17/2023 3:51:15 PM

All of the different rights associated with publishing a book can be confusing. Before signing any kind of contract, it's crucial you understand these rights and that you ensure you maintain any rights that could benefit you in the future. Per attorney Greg Victoroff, an author's "subsidiary rights" refer to a derivative work based on or adapted from the original book. This means, if you take the content of your book and use it in a different medium, you are practicing your subsidiary rights. This can include audiobooks, movie adaptations, translations, foreign rights, and more. It's important to check the fine print of any publishing contracts to make sure you are not granting these subsidiary rights to your publisher if they don't plan to do anything with these rights.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../SubsidiaryRightsandWhyTheyreImportantinContractNegotiations.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video

What Authors Need to Know Before Optioning Their Work for Film or Television

Greg Victoroff, Esq. — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 16:47:54 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Greg Victoroff, Esq. on 11/11/2019 4:47:54 PM

Greg Victoroff, Esq., partner at Greg Victoroff & Associates, reminds authors that the odds of a book project being produced into a motion picture are slim. If someone approaches you to say he or she is interested in making a movie or TV show out of your book, be mindful of the fact that this is not a guarantee. However, if you do choose to pursue this route, make sure you do not waste too much time or money in the process of optioning your work, Victoroff says. Request a short option period – a year to 18 months – and a fee, of at least a few thousand dollars.

The material contained in this video is NOT legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client or other confidential relationship between the User and the Author Learning Center. Users should contact an attorney in their jurisdiction for legal advice regarding their particular situation.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../WhatAuthorsNeedtoKnowBeforeOptioningTheirWorkforFilmorTelevision.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, Subscriber, video

What are Subsidiary Rights and Why Do They Matter? - podcast

Judy Klein — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 15:39:01 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 11/16/2018 3:39:01 PM

Signing a contract is stressful and there are a lot of clauses and assumptions written in. Without a law degree, understanding what you’re signing can be nearly impossible and quite overwhelming. Luckily, Judy Klein is willing to break down a few things for you. Klein explains the kind of subsidiary rights available to book authors and offers examples. “Sub rights are really every form of the book that is not the book itself,” says Klein. When you sign with a publisher, what are you really giving them? What is still yours? Listen to the clip below to learn more!

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../ALCATEJudyKleinWhatareSubsidiaryRightsandWhyDoTheyMatter.mp3

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, Subscriber, podcast

What are Subsidiary Rights and Why Do They Matter? - video

Judy Klein — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 15:38:21 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 11/16/2018 3:38:21 PM

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../JudyKleinWhatareSubsidiaryRightsandWhyDoTheyMatterNEW.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, Subscriber, video

Tips For Authors on Managing the Foreign Rights to Their Work

Mark Gottlieb — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 13:47:44 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Mark Gottlieb on 3/16/2018 1:47:44 PM

The potential for book sales in international markets is big, so authors must take all of their book's rights seriously, including the foreign rights. Trident Media Group literary agent Mark Gottlieb recommends that authors have proper representation to protect their rights and overall earnings. When not managed correctly, or, when rights are given to the publisher, authors can lose out on a lot of revenue. Authors can retain their foreign rights by working with an agency like Trident Media Group, Gottlieb says, allowing them to sell directly to foreign publishers. This will put more money in the author's pocket since the percentage that an agent earns on these sales is typically much less than what a publisher earns. Gottlieb advises authors to make sure they work with an agent that deals directly with the foreign market and doesn't pass if off to a third party. Your work could end up in a long catalog of books, not getting the attention or exposure it deserves internationally.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../8308.Tips-For-Authors-on-Managing-the-Foreign-Rights-to-Their-Work.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video

Subsidiary Considerations: Book Club Rights - article

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:12:43 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:12:43 AM

There was a time when book clubs ruled the world and having your book selected by the Book of the Month Club or the Literary Guild made a huge difference. It was the sort of thing your publisher would feature prominently in ads for your book, and you’d be invited to a fancy dinner in New York with your book club—it was a major achievement.

That’s no longer the case. Nowadays, we mostly think of a book club as getting together with a group of friends every once in a while to talk about a book, trade recipes, and have a good time. But book clubs can still be important. The large clubs like the Book of the Month Club or the Literary Guild don’t have the same clout they once did, but they still reach audiences. If one of them chooses your book, its members will trust that it’s something they should read. Of course, the most influential book club today is Oprah’s book club. Unfortunately, only a few books are chosen for Oprah’s book club, but it’s a wonderful thing if it happens.

There was a time when book clubs resulted in a lot of money for authors as well. You could wind up with a nice little option that could give you tens of thousands of dollars, and even six figures wasn’t unheard of. But that was when the Book of the Month Book Clubs and the Doubleday Book Clubs, two giant corporations, existed separately. They merged, and now there just isn’t enough competition to generate those kinds of pay outs. It’s still satisfying to have a book club wanting your book and putting their imprimatur on it, but the cash amounts won’t be as big.

Tags: article, fiction, Nonfiction

Subsidiary Considerations: Audio Book Rights - video

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:12:28 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:12:28 AM

Judy Klein, agent and rights consultant, discusses audiobook rights and where she sees audiobook trends headed in the future. Audiobook rights are an area of subsidiary rights that will continue to grow. Digital downloads are the way of the future, but people still want to listen to books. The money that people earn from audio rights may be smaller, because the market isn’t as concentrated as it used to be, but they will remain very important. Libraries will continue to play a big part. Authors need to pay particular attention to their audio rights and make sure that someone is cultivating the opportunity represented by audio rights. Audiobooks are going to continue to evolve. There are going to be lots of different ways to make money from audio content, and we don’t even know what a lot of them are yet.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../JudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsAudioBookRightsNEW.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video

Subsidiary Considerations: Audio Book Rights - podcast

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:12:21 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:12:21 AM

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../ALCATEJudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsAudioBookRights.mp3

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, podcast

Subsidiary Considerations: Book Club Rights - podcast

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:12:12 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:12:12 AM

Agent and rights expert Judy Klein shares her expertise on trends in book clubs and how book club rights work. She says that there was a time when having your book selected by the Book of the Month Club or the Literary Guild made a huge difference. But that’s no longer the case. Nowadays, we mostly think of a book club as getting together with a group of friends. But book clubs can still be important. The large clubs don’t have the same clout they once did, but they still reach audiences. There was a time when selling your book club rights resulted in a lot of money, but not anymore. It’s still satisfying to have a book club wanting your book and putting their imprimatur on it, but the cash amounts won’t be as big.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../ALCATEJudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsBookClubRights.mp3

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, podcast

Subsidiary Considerations: Serial Rights - podcast

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:12:04 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:12:04 AM

Serial rights for books are a special kind of subsidiary right with a unique audience. Agent and rights expert Judy Klein explains selling serial rights and trends in serial rights. Magazines and newspapers often buy serial rights to a book and publish excerpts, which they usually do before the books come out. There used to be a lot of small magazines that specialized in fiction or particular kinds of nonfiction. There are far fewer of them now, because information has moved to the internet. It used to be that you could sell five pieces from a book to a newspaper, and they would run it across several editions. It’s harder to do that now, but serial rights are still a vital, growing market.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../ALCATEJudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsSerialRights.mp3

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, podcast

Subsidiary Considerations: Serial Rights - article

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:11:49 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:11:49 AM

Magazines acquire pieces of books. They are happy to publish excerpts, especially before the books come out. In Vogue or Vanity Fair or Sports Illustrated or Time Magazine, you’ll often see an exclusive story about someone who has a book coming out in two or three months. That’s a deal someone in subrights made with an editor at the newspaper or magazine. Editors are very keen to get this kind of material, because content is king, and getting exclusive rights to a story is a big deal.

There used to be a lot of small magazines that specialized in fiction or particular kinds of nonfiction. There are far fewer of them now, because information has moved to the internet. It used to be that you could sell five pieces from a book to a newspaper, and they would run it across several editions. It’s harder to do that now, but serial rights are still a vital market, and I think they’re going to be a growing market, because all the new delivery systems we have—smart phones and the internet and so on—still need material, and a good book is a good book no matter what form it’s in.

Tags: article, fiction, Nonfiction

Subsidiary Considerations: Merchandising and Other Rights - article

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:11:24 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:11:24 AM

There is a host of rights associated with a book, many of which you may not even have thought of. I don’t want to call these rights minor, because if you write the next Harry Potter, your merchandising rights will not be minor. Your calendar rights will not be minor. Maybe a saying or character from your book would look good on a greeting card. If you happen to have the rights to the character Waldo, you’re going to make a lot of money. And then of course there are video games, and anthologies—someone might want to use a portion of your book or a story from your book in another collection. Digital rights and electronic rights are growing and evolving in many new ways. If you’re an authority on polar bears or pillow making, someone is going to want to use your material on a website, and there’s a way of licensing that too. If you have a publishing contract, you will notice that braille rights are always included with serial rights, and you’ll never make any money from that. As a condition for publishing almost any book, you have to agree that if a braille association wants to produce a braille version of that book, they have your permission to do it.

Tags: article, fiction, Nonfiction

What are Subsidiary Rights and Why Do They Matter? - article

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:11:07 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:11:07 AM

Subsidiary rights cover every form of the book that is not the physical book itself. When you make a deal with the publisher to publish your book, you give them the right to print, manufacture, and distribute the physical book. Every other form of the book is optional. It’s something that can be licensed to someone else. Someone else can be granted permission to create a foreign-language edition. Someone else can create an audio book. Someone else can create a book-club edition of the book. There could be an excerpt in a magazine. You may have seen an excerpt of a forthcoming novel in the New York Times or your local paper or a magazine like Popular Science. Those are all deals that can be made, and so subsidiary rights are a way of making money above and beyond sales of the physical book produced by the publisher.

Selling subsidiary rights is an excellent opportunity to get exposure for your book. For publishers, all the risk is generally up front—they pay you, and until they actually see how the book does in the marketplace, they don’t know for sure whether they’re going to make a return on their investment. If they can license rights to a book, they have a much better chance of being successful. As an author, if someone likes your book enough to make an audio version of it or select it for a book club, it’s a little like having the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Every additional bit of recognition for your book is a huge advantage, and that recognition often comes in the form of subsidiary rights. Not only does it help the bottom line but it also helps publicity. It gives an agent or editor more talking points when they set out to promote your book—if they can say your book is going to change the world, and that it’s going to attract movie attention, and that it’s going to be sold in forty-seven different languages, that makes a big difference.

Agents and subsidiary rights directors are always sitting down with salespeople, scouts for movie producers, magazine editors, book club editors, and especially foreign editors, and they’re talking about what matters to them. Having the opportunity to sell the rights to your book gives them that much more impetus.

As an author, you can give subsidiary rights to your publisher. You can allow them, in your contract, to handle rights for things like audio books and large-print editions and so on. If you have an agent, the agent will probably hold on to those rights, because they’ll want to make sure someone is capitalizing on them. The important thing is to make sure someone is getting the word out about your book and looking for the ancillary opportunities that come with it. You, your agent, your publisher—everyone gets a little more money and benefits from the increased exposure that comes from having your book talked about.

Tags: article, fiction, Nonfiction

Subsidiary Considerations: Large Print Rights - video

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:10:57 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:10:57 AM

Selling the rights to your book in large print format is an opportunity you should not overlook. Rights consultant Judy Klein discusses the trends in large print rights. One thing that won't change for awhile is that the older readers get, the bigger type they need to read. As a result, large print rights can make you some money. Some kinds of books seem to do especially well with older readers, such as westerns and romances.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../JudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsLargePrintRightsNEW.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video

Subsidiary Considerations: Serial Rights - video

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:10:49 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:10:49 AM

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../JudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsSerialRightsNEW.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video

Subsidiary Considerations: Merchandising and Other Rights - video

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:10:41 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:10:41 AM

There's a host of rights up for sale that you should be aware of when reviewing your publishing contract. Agent Judy Klein discusses some of the subsidiary rights in publishing contracts that can make you money, such as merchandising, electronics, games, calendars, anthologies, and digital, as well as some of the rights that do not earn you money, such as Braille rights.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../JudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsMerchandiseandOtherRightsNEW.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video

Subsidiary Considerations: Large Print Rights - podcast

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:10:32 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:10:32 AM

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../ALCATEJudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsLargePrintRights.mp3

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, podcast

Subsidiary Considerations: Reprint Rights - video

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:10:24 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:10:24 AM

Judy Klein, an agent and rights consultant, discusses reprint rights for books, including what they are, how they have changed over time, and how they relate to other subsidiary rights. Up until a few years ago, reprint rights were a big deal. Your publisher would acquire the rights to your book and produce it in hard cover. That arrangement still exists, but publishing companies have acquired other publishing companies and become conglomerates, so they often have the ability to publish paperbacks within their own organizations. As a result, the author will rarely see more money from reprint rights. In the old days, rights directors paid their mortgages by having auctions for books. Two or three companies would compete for the rights to a book, and they would end up paying six or even seven figures. That has changed, but you can still make money from reprint rights and reach a different audience.

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../JudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsReprintRightsNEW.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video

Subsidiary Considerations: Book Club Rights - video

Judy Klein — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:10:15 GMT

Current Revision posted to Subsidiary Rights by Judy Klein on 2/26/2017 10:10:15 AM

www.authorlearningcenter.com/.../JudyKleinSubsidiaryConsiderationsBookClubRightsNEW.mp4

Tags: fiction, Nonfiction, video