On Foreign Rights

This is a topic sparked by questions I received after I posted my Aussie covers a couple of days ago. It’s one of those nuts and bolts issues in publishing that beginning writers usually don’t think about until someone sends them their first contract. So, what’s it all about?

Consider Joe Author, who has just sold his new book, The Great American Mystery, to St. Martin’s Press. On the advice of his agent, Joe cedes his publisher World rights. What does that mean?

Contract clauses vary, but typically a writer ceding foreign rights to their publisher does so on a 50-50 bases. In other words, if Joe’s North American publisher sells the rights to his mystery to a British publisher for $1,000, Joe will only get $500 of that. Actually, Joe might not ever see that $500. Because the sale comes under Joe’s contract with St. Martin’s, the money from the British sale won’t go directly to Joe; it will be applied against his advance. Only when Joe’s mystery earns out will he receive his $500 from the British sale. (Except of course that, even then, Joe won't get the full $500; Joe only gets $425 or $450, depending on whether his agent takes a 10 or 15 percent commission.)

Now, compare Joe’s experience to Mary’s. Mary signed a contract retaining all of her foreign rights. Mary’s agent sells her French language rights to Paris for $1000. So, how much of that does Mary actually get? Agents typically take 20% of foreign sales, simply because they’re more time-consuming and therefore more expensive to negotiate. But Mary still makes $800 out of her foreign sale, compared to Joe, who only made $425.

From this you might conclude that it’s a no brainer for authors to retain their foreign rights. Well, like so much else in the publishing industry, it’s not that simple.

First of all, sometimes a house will refuse to budge on foreign rights. You can either sign over all your foreign rights, or go find another publisher. Hmmm.

At other times, a house will pay more for a book if it comes with world rights. The thinking here is, We THINK this book will earn out if we pay $30,000 for it, but we’re not sure. If we hedge our bets and hold onto World rights, we can up our chances of covering our asses if the book bombs. So the publisher tells the editor, “Offer Joe $25,000 for North American rights only, but $30,000 for World.” Again, the author has a choice to make. It’s possible he could insist on retaining his world rights and then never make a single foreign sale. Bzzzzz. You lose $5,000.

A lot depends on the author’s agent. Large, prestigious agencies like William Morris have dedicated foreign sales departments. Their clients typically—but not always—retain their foreign rights. On the other hand, most small, one-man agencies are seldom equipped to make foreign sales. Their clients are best advised to sign over their foreign rights to their publishers and be happy with 50% (minus the agent’s 10-15%, of course) of whatever rights their publisher sells.

Frequently a publisher will insist on retaining World English rights. This means the author can sell the book to be translated and sold someplace like France or the Czech Republic, but only the original North American publisher can sell the book to Britain or Australia.

That’s the nuts and bolts. What’s my personal experience? When I first started out in this business, I was with William Morris, and they saw to it that I retained all my foreign rights. When my agent, Helen, left William Morris to marry a Hollywood producer and move to California, I went with her. Her agency is small, but she works with a dedicated foreign sales agent who is very effective. We usually retain foreign rights, but we sometimes cede World English. More about that later.

Just how lucrative are foreign sales, anyway? I know some authors who’ve sold to German and French publishers (typically the best-paying markets) for six figures. That is rare. Most foreign sales are for $1-5,000. But if an author sells to fifteen or twenty different countries, that can add up. Particularly when you figure this is “found” money—essentially gravy on top of whatever you made from your sale to your North American Publishers.

Of course, not all books sell well overseas, and not all overseas markets are easy to enter. I’ve found that romances sell much better than historical mysteries; I’m STILL selling my romances to new foreign publishers. I’ve also found that Britain is a really, really hard market to crack. My advice to beginning authors is, If your publisher wants World English rights, let them keep them. For some reason, publishers seem to have more success selling to Britain and Australia than agents.

There are lots of other rights that authors and publishers wrangle over at contract time—film rights, large print rights, audio rights—lots and lots of rights. But for every author who sells her book to Hollywood, hundreds more will make a foreign sale. So while we all dream of seeing our book made into a movie, we’re more likely to find ourselves renting storage space to have someplace to go with all those boxes and boxes of books in Russian and Dutch, Italian and Chinese, Romanian and Bulgarian, Spanish and Swedish, Danish and Slovakian…

On Contracts, Proposals, and Bouncing Back

We’ve just accepted a contract for two more contemporary thrillers—sequels to THE ARCHANGEL PROJECT. The new books will be published in 2009 and 2010.

This means that in addition to the Sebastian St. Cyr series, I’ll also be writing a contemporary thriller series featuring the characters from ARCHANGEL: October Guinness, a reluctant remote viewer dragged back into the Navy, and Jax Alexander, a cynical CIA type. At this stage, it’s a series still in search of a name. That’s the problem with duel heroes—one can’t simply call the series by the hero’s name.

While I haven’t blogged about it, the road to this new contract has been rocky. I originally planned the second book in the series to be THE BERMUDA EFFECT. I did tons of research on Cuba and South America and the Bay of Pigs and Iran-Contra. I liked the story so much I wrote beyond the necessary 35 pages/3-5 first chapters to the first turning point—nearly 100 pages. In other words, I invested a lot of time in that proposal, which I sent in last spring. After sitting on it forever, the publishers turned the proposal down in mid-August.

Yes, it can happen. I’ve seen it happen to two writers I know—multipublished, highly successful writers of established series. Which is why smart writers don’t continue working on a proposal until after they’ve heard back from their editors. I didn’t make that mistake, but I did make the mistake of spending too much time researching the book, I wrote too long of a proposal, and I plotted the book out in far more detail than was necessary at that stage. All mistakes I will never make again.

Having the proposal rejected meant I had to come up with a new idea, research it, and write the new proposal, all the while rushing to get SERPENTS in on deadline. Which is why my life has been very hectic, why I am now behind on my writing schedule, and why I am taking a much-needed break this Christmas.

The second book will now be called THE DEADLIGHT CONNECTION. I had originally planned this to be Book Four in the series (yeah, I was doing the alphabet thing with the titles, but that will now have to go away). DEADLIGHT is a neat idea involving Nazi subs and Russians and terrorists, and my publishers are very excited about it. The third book will, if all goes well, be set in Morocco (with Casablanca in the title, naturally).

Having the original thriller proposal rejected and thus having to invest another six weeks frantically coming up with a new proposal means the next ten months will be pretty tense, with two books to write in a scarily short span of time. Right now, I’m working on the proposal for the fifth Sebastian St. Cyr book. And I’m going to be careful not to overdo it!