Reversion Of Rights & Backlist Bliss
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 10:27AMTo many of you the above title will mean this: blah blah blah blahbitty blah blah. In other words, 'Say what?'
Let me explain. Some terms first.
Backlist--generally accepted to mean the books that a writer has written, often some years before. In essence, their aging bullpen. Decent players whose time has past because there are shiny new players--books, in this case.
Reversion Of Rights--most publishing contracts have in them a clause which states, basically, that once a publisher feels they have milked every possible cent from a book you've written, the rights they purchased originally revert back to you. You could, literally, go out and sell the book to another publisher--but that rarely happens (see 'shiny new' concept above).
Writers have rarely worried about reversion of rights. After all, what were they going to do? Print, warehouse, and ship their titles? And deal with returns? Which was all a pointless consideration anyway, since they had zero chance of getting these old titles distributed to the major chains and retailers.
But guess what happened? The Kindle. Then the Nook. And the iPad. Widespread acceptance of eBooks, and all the flavors of eReaders out there, have given authors with a backlist, like me, the ability to actually exercise this reverion og rights clause and get their titles out there again.
Others have written on the wonders of backlist publishing, but I want to touch on the mechanics of how the reversion of rights works...at least in my case.
Spring 2009. I receive a letter from a former publisher, Penguin/Putnam/Berkley. Out of the blue.
I read this and think...so what? What am I going to do with Top Ten? I literally forget about this letter for over a year.
Then, early summer 2010, with the rise of eBooks in full swing, I was deciding to release a new novel as an eBook (Confessions), plus two unpublished novels I had gathering dust on my hard drive (All For One and The Donzerly Light), when I remembered that letter. I dug it out and thought, 'What about the four novels published before Top Ten?' So, I shot off a letter to HarperCollins (who acquired William Morrow, the publisher of these four novels). Many months went by. No response. I began to wonder, were they going to try to release them as eBooks? The contract did not give them that right to exploit. Another letter. Nothing. Finally, I sent a letter than was a bit more...forceful, thinking the next stop was turning it over to my lawyer.
Boom. April. What do I get?
Four letters from HarperCollins. One for each book. So now I have my entire backlist. They're mine! All mine!
Well, almost. Several subsidiary rights which were sold at the time of my original contract remain in force, such as non-exclusive audio book rights to the titles. Meaning, I could also release my own audio books, but that's down the road.
And that is it. That's how reversion of rights worked in my case. I've heard horror stories about other authors having to fight for these rights, and publishers dragging their feet for years. I was comparatively lucky.
Reader Comments (5)
That is a great story, thank you for sharing. You need some fresh covers and blurbs and, if your books have a good backlist potential, they will get another long life.
Very interesting and very cool! Will you be doing paperbacks as well? createspace.com (the Amazon subsidiary) is one place the Indies use to do paper.
Larry,
Have new paperbacks for several. Will eventually have paperback editions for all of them.
Ryne
Hey that's awesome! What a relief you didn't have to get out your lawyer . . . or you didn't have to hire LM Stull and me to "persuade" them. ;) Good luck with the novels. I hope they sell a ton.
Great new site Ryne. Shiny and there is a hint of bacon between the lines. Great post. I am learning so much from other authors. It's like going back to school. So interesting that now you can breath new life into a novel which has run it's natural course only to be reborn. Ebooks are the next big thing. I like audio books too as I have a long commute and might get a ticket trying to read my kindle while driving. Next big thing is Ebooks with audio. I said it first. Lol
Reggie Ridgway http://characterswellmet.blogspot.com. Not as shiny a website but my new book cover and first chapter are there.