Books & rights · Less obvious
Serialisation and extracts
A newspaper or magazine pays to run a piece of the book — and tells a million people it exists.
First serial is the extract published around publication day; second serial comes later. A well-placed extract can be worth more in copies sold than in the fee itself, which is why publishers chase them. You still want the fee. It is one of the few rights that pays you to advertise your own book.
- Typical pay
- From a few hundred pounds in a specialist magazine to several thousand in a national newspaper. Huge serials for scandalous memoirs are another sport entirely.
- Ceiling
- Solid ceiling
- Speed
- First money in weeks
- Effort
- Light extra work
- Needs
- Needs a book
How it works
- 01
The publisher's publicity or rights team (or your agent) offers exclusive or first extracts to features editors.
- 02
The extract is licensed for a fee, a credit, and usually a publication-date embargo.
- 03
You may be asked to adapt or cut. That is still your name on the piece.
How to start
- 01
Identify the chapter that can stand alone — a scene, an argument, a revelation — and make sure the contract has not given serial away for nothing.
- 02
If you are self-publishing, you can pitch extracts yourself. Features editors still answer a sharp email.
- 03
Time it. An extract six months after publication is a reprint; an extract in publication week is a campaign.
Watch out
- 01
Exclusivity with one paper can block everyone else. Get a short window.
- 02
A newspaper will cut you. Agree the pull-quotes you cannot live with, in writing.
- 03
Do not serialise the twist if the twist is why anyone would buy the book.
An extract in a national paper is the closest most writers get to a billboard. I would rather be paid for the billboard than not, but I would take the billboard even when the fee is small. People do not buy books they have never heard of.