A primer
What you are actually selling
Subsidiary rights, translation, audio, film options — the words get waved about in publishing like a Latin mass. Here they are in English, from someone who has granted them, acquired them, and occasionally watched them gather dust.
01
The book is a bundle
A book is not one right. It is a bundle: to print it in hardback, to paperback it, to make an ebook, to record an audio edition, to serialise it in a newspaper, to translate it, to make it large-print, to option it for film, to put a character on a mug. The contract is the document that says which of those sticks you are handing over, for how long, in which territories, and for what share of the money.
If you remember nothing else from this page, remember that. Writers get poorer when they think they are selling 'the book'. They are licensing a list of uses. The uses you do not license, you still own.
02
Primary rights
Primary rights are the ones the publisher is actually in business to exploit: the volume rights in a language and a territory. In a British contract that is often the right to publish a print and ebook edition in the English language in the UK and Commonwealth — or, if you are not careful, the world.
World English, world rights, and 'the universe in all formats now known or invented' are not synonyms, though they can look similar at two in the morning. World rights means the publisher may sell or sublicense everywhere, in every language. That can be efficient if their rights department is hungry and good. It can be a long nap for your translations if they are not.
03
Subsidiary rights
Subsidiary rights are everything beyond the primary edition: first and second serial, anthology, quotation, book club, large print, digest, educational, sometimes merchandising. The contract should list them, and should say how the proceeds are split — often 50/50, sometimes 75/25 or 90/10 in the author's favour for uses the publisher is not really set up to sell.
A right granted and never used is a parked car. Ask for a time limit: if they have not exploited a particular right within a stated period, it reverts. Reversion is how a bundle becomes yours again.
04
Translation
Translation is a licence to a foreign publisher for a language (and sometimes a territory: Brazilian Portuguese is not Portugal). They pay an advance against royalties and they hire the translator. You are not expected to speak Polish. You are expected to have written an English book that can survive Polish.
If your agent holds these rights, they (and a network of sub-agents) will take a higher commission than on home deals — commonly 20% — because the work is specialist. If your publisher holds them, you will see a share of what they achieve, on their timescale. Ask, before you sign, what they have actually sold lately in your category.
05
Audio
Audio is now a primary format wearing subsidiary clothing. Many print publishers want it in the deal because the money is real. Many agents try to keep it out, or to split it, because an audio-only publisher or a retailer-backed studio may pay more, or simply produce the thing.
If you self-publish, you already own it. Exclusive deals raise the royalty and close other doors. Non-exclusive keeps the doors open and pays less per listen. Neither is moral. Both are arithmetic.
06
Dramatic rights: film, TV, stage
An option is not a film. It is a paid period of exclusivity during which a producer tries to make a film (or a series, or a play). The purchase price — the larger sum — is due if they exercise. Most options lapse. That is not a failure of the book. That is the industry.
Never sell the dramatic rights outright for option money. Agree the purchase price now, while they still want you. Keep sequel, character, and merchandising from vanishing into a schedule of definitions. Hire someone who has seen this movie, legally speaking, before.
07
Who should hold what
A good agent is, among other things, a rights department you do not have to staff. A good publisher's rights department is a sales force you do not have to take to Frankfurt. Neither is automatically better. The question is: who will actually offer the book, to whom, and on what split?
Self-published writers often assume they have 'all the rights' and then never send a single translation or audio offer. Ownership without a route to market is a souvenir. If you have a book that travels, find a rights agent even if you never want a print publisher.
08
Agents, splits, and the small print
Literary agents in the UK typically take 15% on home earnings and 20% on US and translation. That is for doing the deal and chasing the money. It is not a tax. It is a commission, and it should be earned.
Read the accounting clause (when you are paid, in what currency, against what deductions). Read the remainder clause. Read the non-compete, which can quietly stop you writing the next book in the neighbourhood of the last one. Read the reversion clause twice. The Society of Authors will read the contract with you if you are a member, which you should be the moment you have one.
Walk the streams
The primer is the map key. The catalogue is the map.