http://chillibreeze.in/kids-writing/the-writer%E2%80%99s-rights/
Sowmya Rajendran is a children’s writer based in Pune. She has published ten picture books and has co-authored a children’s novel. She enjoys blogging, traveling, and pretending to have not grown up… yet.
The Writer’s Rights
You’ve finally written a story, identified a publisher, sent in your manuscript, and hear that magical word from your publisher that sends you off on a tizzy – Accepted! But after performing your victory dance, calm down and think about the following:
What are the terms and conditions offered by the publisher? If you are a new writer, you may have little choice but to agree to them all, but it helps to be aware and informed of what these terms and conditions mean.
Publication Rights
- Publishers usually retain sole and exclusive license to produce, publish and reproduce the work for any number of editions and units. This means, you cannot publish your work with any other publishing house.
- If you have submitted your work to more than one publishing house, ensure that you withdraw your work from the others once you decide to publish with a certain publisher.
Warranty
- You will be asked to warrant that the work you’ve submitted is original and not plagiarized in any way from any source.
- If legal issues crop up later on plagiarism charges, you will be held responsible.
- You will also be asked to agree that you will not bring out any other competing work that may interfere with or impede the sale of the work accepted by the publishing house.
Copyright
- Read the copyright terms carefully. Is this an outright purchase – meaning, the publisher has ALL rights over your story, or will you get to retain the copyright and be paid royalty? You need to check this also to find out if you are being paid a fair amount.
- An outright purchase means that your publisher owns the entire content and is free to do whatever they wish with the content without paying you more than what they already have- make it into a film or an audio book or merchandize your characters.
- If you retain copyright, will you get paid for translations of your work too? Read the fine print carefully!
- Even if you retain the copyright, publishing houses will usually hold the rights on text revisions in consultation with you. Cooperate!
Work Schedule
- The publisher may provide deadlines (after consulting with you) on when you need to submit the installments if your story is planned as a series.
Publication
- Are you expected to pay for the cost of publication either in part or whole? Watch out for publishing houses that are out to exploit new writers who’d do anything to see their work in print. If you are asked to cough up cash, ensure that they really value your work.
- Some publishing houses will offer you a percentage of the sales if you contribute to the cost of production. This is again a dicey area- if you haven’t worked with them previously, you may find it difficult to trust that they will give you actual sales figures. Ask questions if you have doubts.
- Are you expected to take on costs for marketing? Some publishing houses expect writers to promote their work themselves – doing readings in town and out, online promos and so on. How much time and effort are you willing to put in?
- Publishers usually set the price and have exclusive control over the sale of the work.
Royalty
- What percentage of royalty will you be paid against sales? If it’s an outright purchase, you will not receive any.
- Usually, publishing houses pay a signing amount in advance to the writer that is non-refundable. The royalty amount earned in excess of this is paid according to the timeline set by the publishers (usually annually, at the end of the financial year).
- If there is sale of surplus stock (remainder stock that exists after the elapse of a certain period of time), that exceeds the cost of production, the writer may receive royalty. If the sale is below cost of production, royalty may not be paid.
Other Rights
- What are the terms for revised editions? If the writer is not willing to cooperate on revising, the publisher may use another reviser who could be paid from the royalty share or in any other way deemed fit by the publisher.
- If your publisher enters into an agreement with a third party on your work, will you be issued a separate contract and be entitled to payment? If you retain copyright, you will be involved in this.
- How many author copies will you get? Will you get a discount on direct purchase from the publisher?
Literary Agents
- Would you need a literary agent to approach a publisher? Literary agents usually represent novelists and major non-fiction writers who can afford to pay the percentage that’s their due.
- Children’s writers make modest money from their writing and a percentage of that will hardly amount to anything as fees for a literary agent. So, It’s perfectly all right to send your manuscript out directly.
- Typically, the first print run for a picture book is for a few thousand copies and it does take a while before the book goes into more prints, if at all. The scene for children’s novels by Indian writers is not too different either. However, fortunately, since many of the children’s publishers in India are new and open to first-timers, an agent is not really required.
If you want to establish a good relationship with your publisher and work together again, you must enter the field with clarity and resolve differences with maturity. Build contacts along the way since networking can bring you many more opportunities to publish. And then, one day, you know that little dream we all have of walking into a bookshop and seeing the shelves lined with books we’ve written?
It’ll come true.
About the author
Sowmya Rajendran is a children’s writer based in Pune. She has published ten picture books and has co-authored a children’s novel. She enjoys blogging, traveling, and pretending to have not grown up… yet.Related posts:
No comments:
Post a Comment