Posts Tagged ‘Rights’

Contracts and Rights in More Than 140 Characters

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

While I was busy at work and then grocery shopping a discussion arose regarding my historical romances and what’s being published where.

Basically, the more than 140 character version is that my publisher only bought North American rights to my historicals. My agent tried to get them to go for World rights but they weren’t interested. I knew I had the foreign rights. In fact, there was a nice handful of foreign sales by my agent

It was only after I wondered out loud to my agent why Not Wicked Enough was on sale at Amazon.co.uk only in paper and not in digital that I learned that Berkley had North American rights only: essentially, the US and Canada.  That book should not have been on sale in the UK at all. And, as it turns out when it occurred to me that I ought to check, the same was true for Scandal and Indiscreet.

So, hoo-yah! Kind of late. I self-published Scandal, Indiscreet and Not Wicked Enough in all the territories where I have rights, including the UK. I will do the same for Not Proper Enough when it releases this September.

I’m still waiting for an accounting of what I am owed for books sold in countries where my publisher did not have rights.

The odd thing is that originally, it was very disappointing that we were unable to get my publisher to buy World Rights. They just weren’t interested. Things are changing fast in the publishing business. Speaking only for myself, I’m glad to have those other rights. And, in fact, I was quite disappointed when my publisher agreed to reprint Indiscreet rather than revert the rights to me. Scandal was/is still in print.

Share

Good News!

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

I have received my rights back for my two historicals, Lord Ruin and The Spare. This means, among other things, that the publisher no longer has rights to my characters and that all the pesky legal issues that made the possibility of sequels kind of difficult are now removed. Now the only issues are what to do with the rights. I think reselling them would be difficult and unlikely, but I suppose worth asking about.

In all honesty, the decision for me will be whether I try to resell the books myself say, via the Kindle, or simply give them away as free eBooks. I know EXACTLY who I would want to do any cover art, though. Then I’ll have to think about how, when and if I can do the sequels to Lord Ruin so many people have asked about every year since the book was first published.

Also, today I received Czech language versions for Scandal. In Czech, my last name is Jewelova. In case you were wondering.

Share