Books Rights and Licensing

BOOKS RIGHTS AND LICENSING. How does a publisher go about licensing the rights to a book to an international publisher for a translated edition. John Bond of Riverwinds Consulting discusses the basic steps.

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TRANSCRIPT:
Hi there, I am John Bond from Riverwinds Consulting and this is Publishing Defined.

Today I am to going to discuss the basics of licensing the rights to a book or product in scholarly publishing to an international publisher for a translated edition.

The essence of rights deals is that a company licenses the rights to publish a different language version of your work in their language or region. You are paid a modest one-time fee or royalty and do no work and make no investment. The translating company does all the work and takes all the risks or reaps all the reward. Likely, your company would still be able to sell the original language edition in this region.

For this discussion, I am going to assume we are discussing an American scholarly publisher licensing translation rights for a book or monograph to an international publisher for that company to republish in their native language.

As a scholarly publisher, the first question to ask is who in your office will do the work. It may be done through your marketing department, through business development, editorial departments, or other places. Have all efforts concentrated with one group and refer all inquiries there. Also, some publishers use an agent as the intermediary. Many times, an agent will know about a market than an employee who might have this as a part of their job.

As a first step, I’d suggest you consider your motivations for pursuing international editions of your books. Is it for additional revenue, or to help you promote the original edition you published? Perhaps the author or editor has a high interest in having their work be available in other countries or other languages. Or maybe you want to spread the word about the topic of the material and increase the exposure to the content. Either way, knowing your motivations is very helpful.

Next is to understand what you have available to sell. All your books’ metadata should be listed in one spreadsheet. Appropriate bibliographic information for each title should be included, such as author, title, ISBN, format, and physical specifications, and so on. This document will grow and expand as the categories increase.

Next is confirming your organization holds all the rights to the material. Check your contracts that you own all rights, in all languages, in all formats, worldwide. Assuming you do, confirm there is no material in the book (let’s say a figure or table) that was reprinted with permission from a third party. If there was, you will need to note this and convey this limitation to future interested parties. Let’s assume you have no reprinted material.

Next create brief marketing materials that explain your company or organization. Note the key titles and offer a complete list. An informative one or two-page PDF will serve the purpose.

Now you will need to create a list of potential publishers to contact by region or language. You may know these publishers already, or your authors may know of them. An internet search might work, that is “medical publishers in Spain” or “science publishers in Italy.” A final source is looking at who exhibits at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This large convention in Frankfurt, Germany is where most international publishers gather in one place. Check out what companies attend this convention.

Next contact these publishers with an email or call about their interest in having them considering your books for possible translation. Explain your interest, and discuss the newest or not yet released title. Include any promotional material......

[shanikapowell]

This was really informative. Thank you!

[KTtraintowin]

Thank you for sharing your expertise. I hope you can answer a question of mine. A few months ago I was contacted by a publisher in China who expressed interest in translation rights to my self published book. I sent the e book for review and they said that they could not read. I then sent them a read only PDF file, but it did not have a watermark. i did not even know that I could create a watermark for my pdf. Should I be concerned? Thank you very much.

[ssrijasdaruk]

Thank you for sharing. It is very good info. Just a question. Can I as a translator ask permission from a book's author directly to translate the book and reproduce/republish in the target language region (likely to be for profit)?

[bbAX]

Hello John, I'm really happy to watch your video. I'm illustrator and working on my first project for kids, some preschool learning books, something like (Dora the Explorer). Do you have any advice in this field ? How I shall deal with a publisher (I'm living in France by the way)? Till now I don't know if it is better to sale rights to publishers, or to let the publisher sale the foreign rights. Till now I don't have a publisher, and in case I can't find one, I will publish the book myself, and after sale the foreign rights, good idea? Thank you very much for your help

[hadeel]

I have a question sir. Which is preferable, to ask the author's permission by myself -I am the translator- or to ask him by the publisher?

[davitberishvili]

Please answer anyone if you know can I download and use e versionn of books (pdf, djvu, chm...)?
because almost every of them have a text about prohibiting for spreading this books in any form without persmission from publisher.

[riacarmona]

Hi just want to ask something hope you can notice me. If I submit a book in an online platform and they bought the full copyright and I decided not to submit the next series to them instead I will submitted it to other platform will I break the contract from the first?