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The Steve Laube Agency

The Steve Laube Agency

Helping to Change the World Word by Word

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Home » Publishing A-Z

Publishing A-Z

R Is for Reversion of Rights

By Steve Laubeon November 27, 2023
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You’ve published your book with a publisher. But it has been some time since it was published, and it feels like the publisher is no longer interested in promoting your book. Or the book is “old” enough that the publisher isn’t going to spend new money to sell copies but is simply keeping it available.

Or the print edition of the book is no longer available, but it is still considered “in print” because an ebook edition is still available.

Now you want the rights back so you can do something with your work that the publisher is unlikely to do. This is called reversion of rights. Defined by Joanna Penn as “a clause in a literary contract that allows authors to work with their publisher to regain some or all of their book rights after certain conditions are met.”

How Do You Get Your Rights Back?

First, define what you mean by “rights.” A typical book contract has a “grant of rights” section defining what rights you grant to the publisher. Usually, this means the right to print and distribute your book in physical or digital form (or audio, etc.).

Hopefully, your contract has a “termination” clause, which defines the conditions that, when met, allow you to get your rights back.

This is one reason to have an agent guiding your career because I have encountered numerous situations where the author was prevented from reversion due to an unfriendly clause or two.

We strive to have a dollar amount be the condition. “What does that mean?” you ask. Let’s say that three years after first publication, if your book has not earned $500 in author royalty earnings in the previous 12 months, you can request reversion of the rights to your book. Note the conditions: (1) Three years, (2) $500 in earnings in the past year.

While that may seem simple, it can be complicated if you were paid a large advance that has not yet been covered by your author earnings. In some cases, the publisher has said, “If you pay back the remaining amount of your unearned advance, we will revert the rights.” In other cases, the publisher tacked on the statement, “And if you buy the remaining print inventory we have in the warehouse, we will revert the rights.”

Ouch. If the last paragraph is your situation, it can be expensive. I remember one case where the publisher had over 2,000 physical books in their warehouse; and the author couldn’t afford to buy them all, even at a huge discount. So she waited three years and worked her best to sell those books at speaking events around the country. Then she asked again, and the publisher had 200 left in the warehouse; and she was able to buy those and get the rights reverted. She now sells them herself wherever she goes and uses a service like Ingram Spark or Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing to keep the book available online.

As I wrote, it can be complicated.

What Plans Do You Have if You Get Your Rights Back?

Getting your rights back is fine if you have a plan. You will have to change the interior copyright page and title page to remove the publisher’s information. You may have to retypeset the book if the publisher is unable or unwilling to provide those digital files. You will have to get a new cover because the publisher may not own the rights to the cover (the designer may own those rights). You may want to rewrite certain sections to bring the book up to date. Etcetera, etcetera.

We have several clients who successfully had their rights reverted and now have a strong indie publishing business selling their books on their own.

In the last month, we have worked with a half dozen of our clients seeking the reversion of their rights. Each case was different as we were dealing with six different publishers and six different contracts written at different times under different circumstances.

Your mileage may vary.

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Category: Book Business, Contracts, Publishing A-Z

F Is for Foreign Rights

By Steve Laubeon November 13, 2023
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(A version of this post was published in Spring 2022. It has been revised for today.) Those of us in the United States tend to frame the publishing universe within our borders in the English language. We can forget that publishing is a global concern. You may have heard of Penguin Random House (owned by Bertelsmann, a German company) because their various imprints dominate the best-seller list. …

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Category: Book Business, Publishing A-ZTag: Book Business, Foreign rights

R Is for Reserve Against Returns

By Steve Laubeon November 6, 2023
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Every traditionally published author needs to understand the principle of “Reserves Against Returns,” which is an integral part of publishing economics. It can reduce the amount of money an author receives in their royalty statement. It is usually a shock and elicits a phone call to their agent crying, “What happened to my money?” Did you realize that book publishing is the …

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Category: Book Business, Publishing A-ZTag: Book Business, Contracts, Get Published, Money, Traditional Publishing

J Is for Just-in-Time

By Steve Laubeon October 30, 2023
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The economics of bookselling are complex and ever-changing. There is a method of inventory control called “Just-in-Time” (or JIT) that revolutionized both the retail and manufacturing industries. When I began as a bookseller, there was no such thing as computerized inventory, at least not in the Christian bookstore business. We used a method called “Stack ’em high and watch ’em fly.” Because “If …

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Category: Book Business, Marketing, Publishing A-ZTag: Book Business, Economics, Publishing A-Z, Technology

H Is for Hybrid

By Steve Laubeon October 23, 2023
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To state the obvious, the publishing industry has changed rather dramatically over the last few years. The possibility for a writer to inexpensively produce their own books (in e-book form) shifted the sands. In addition, the economic challenges facing the brick-and-mortar bookstore reduced the amount of shelf space available to launch a new book via traditional methods. It appears to be an …

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Category: Publishing A-Z, SteveTag: hybrid author; ebooks, publishing

P Is for Preemptive Offer

By Steve Laubeon October 16, 2023
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It can be exciting if more than one publisher is interested in your book. The publishers gather their calculators and prepare to make their offers on the book. Depending on how many publishers are involved in the bidding process (we’ve had as many as nine at once for a property), it can quickly become complicated. (I talked about the “auction” in a previous post.) Some will bid solely …

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Category: Book Business, Publishing A-ZTag: Book Business, Preemptive Offer, Publishing A-Z

A Is for Auction

By Steve Laubeon October 9, 2023
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When an agent has a client who is wanting to shop for the best deal available from publishers or if there is a particular project that is bound to garner significant interest from more than one publisher, the agent can hold what it called an auction. Or if a project attracts multiple offers from different publishers a “bidding war” can ensue. The word “auction” is tossed …

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Category: Book Business, Publishing A-ZTag: auction, Publishing A-Z, publishing auction

E Is for Editor

By Steve Laubeon October 2, 2023
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Your editor can be your best friend in the industry (besides your agent, of course). Or your editor can be your worst enemy. Bad Side First An editor who doesn’t reply to your email inquiries or return your phone calls is either ignoring you on purpose or is so busy with other pressing matters they can’t get to yours. If you have this problem, make sure you didn’t create it in …

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Category: Book Business, Career, Editing, Publishing A-Z, Writing CraftTag: Editing, Editors

I Is for ISBN

By Steve Laubeon September 25, 2023
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978-0-7852-6400-2 978-1-62184-113-5 978-1-4245-6490-3 No, these are not the plays being called by a quarterback during a football game. They are the ISBN numbers on the back of three different books by three different authors. Kudos to the first person to identify the three titles in the comments below. Origins In the mid-60s, a major British bookstore chain (W.H. Smith) moved toward a …

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Category: Book Business, Publishing A-ZTag: Book Business, ISBN, Publishing A-Z

G Is for Great

By Steve Laubeon August 8, 2022
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“There are a lot of good manuscripts out there. What we want are those which are great.” I’ve said this many times but thought I should elaborate. Please note the following information applies mostly to nonfiction projects. When it comes to the nonfiction books that attract major publishers, I believe the author must have at least two of three “great” things: Great Concept Great Writing Great …

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Category: Book Business, Craft, Creativity, Platform, Publishing A-Z, Writing CraftTag: Concept, Platform, Writing Craft
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