Yesterday, I told you about the various covers for my contemporary romance, Double Trouble. In that post, there’s an aside about foreign rights and foreign editions, which got me to thinking about just how weird that particular facet of publishing can be.
When an author writes a book, he or she inherently owns all rights to the work. When an author sells a book to a publisher, the publisher acquires a suite of rights in the work. The publisher might buy world rights – which means all formats and all languages in all territories – or might buy some sub-set of rights, like U.S. English. Other rights are loosely called subsidiary rights, and include a long list of things like calendar rights, audio book rights and (my favourite) action figure rights. Subsidiary rights can also refer to foreign language rights and foreign territory rights. When the publisher buys world rights, their Subsidiary Rights department will try to sell other rights in the work. When the author retains rights, the author’s agent will try to sell other rights in the work.
Frequently, the placement of subsidiary rights happens without the author’s knowledge or active participation. When the house owns the rights, the placement is considered to be outside the author’s field of control, although the author will share in the compensation for those rights, based on the terms defined in the author’s contract with the publisher. Authors tend to hear more about sub-rights placements from their agents, when the rights are handled that way, but sometimes there are sub-agents involved and foreign agencies, and comparatively small deals happen quietly. It’s not perceived to be worth anyone’s time to send a lot of letters about a deal for Yugoslavian mass market rights which pays a flat fee of $500, for example. Sometimes, people just forget.
Here’s an analogy that occurred to me yesterday. I like it a lot, and maybe you will, too. When the book’s sub-rights are available for sale, the book is tarted up by whoever controls the rights. The book is presented to prospective rights-buyers with a glowing cover letter and some review quotes, maybe a list of credentials like an endorsement from a famous author, or a list of placements made so far. Think of the book as getting a new haircut, a great new dress, and a fancy pair of shoes. Think of the book taking a turn in front of the mirror before heading out confidently into a bar filled with sub-rights agents, editorial scouts and acquiring editors from all over the world. It’s a crowded bar on any night of the week – many many books will never sell a single sub-right. The book might give out its number and contact info a hundred times with no results. The book might make a lasting connection or find true love. The book might stroll the perimeter of the floor, night after night after night, without talking to anyone. No matter what happens, though, the book does not call up the author and tell the author everything that happened each night that it’s out at the bar. This is why the author is often the last person to know if the book has hooked up with someone and gone back to a hotel room.
The author might find out about a sub-rights placement when a sub-rights contract is mailed to the author. If the author still controls the rights, this will come from the agent and will require the author’s signature. Those are the ones we definitely hear about. If the author doesn’t control the rights, the house might send a deal memo: the terms of the contract itself are considered to be proprietary, but the house may want to keep the author and agent in the loop. The author might find out when a copy of the resulting book shows up in his or her mailbox. The author might find out when a payment is posted to a royalty statement – and since payments are sent to the author four months after the end of the reporting period, and foreign revenue is often received slowly, this could happen years after the hook-up happened. Both parties involved could have forgotten that magical incident by then.
Rights can be exercised without the author’s awareness or without the author being compensated, even though the contracts say the author should be compensated. Of course, there is piracy – which is like the book being kidnapped in its fancy dress and new shoes, smuggled on to a ship and sold into slavery forever – but there also are more stories circulating about legitimate foreign publishers creating editions of books without contracting for those rights. Many authors are hearing about these illegitimate offspring from readers, who quite innocently let the author know how much they enjoyed the (insert language of choice here) edition of the book, which legally and technically should not exist. Are these tales urban myths? Maybe or maybe not. But certainly, there is enough wiggle room in the traditional model of tracking foreign and subsidiary rights for this to happen without detection.
So, if you are are a reader and you read in other languages, it would be seven kinds of awesome if you got into the habit of letting any author know when you read his or her book in a foreign language edition. Think of yourself as an eyewitness, a whistle-blower or a Crimestopper. It might very well be that the edition you’ve read is legitimate, but it might not be. There’s no downside to telling an author you loved a foreign edition – it’s exciting to hear from foreign readers, and the internet makes that not only possible but cheap to do.
The bottom line is that we all want more books to read. When authors don’t get paid for their work, because their content is being sold unlawfully, they might not be able to afford to continue to create work. Keeping our eyes open in the marketplace and speaking up is a good way to ensure that we all get more stories to read. How can that be a bad thing?
Deborah Cooke: Author 