You’ve finally finished your book. You’ve written it, edited it multiple times, shared it with critique partners and beta readers, copy edited it one final time, made it as perfect as you were able, and all your hard work has paid off. This book is either being traditionally or self-published, and as you transition from the right-brain creative side of writing into the left-brain business side of publishing, you want to make sure your book works as hard as you did creating it to make money.
Come on. Admit it. You hope your book makes lots of money.
Believe it or not, you have a lot of say in how much money your book earns over its lifetime. But you need to learn about the many profit possibilities out there so you can make informed choices about this effort.
Remember, the amount of the advance is not the only factor you should be concerned with when negotiating a contract with a publisher. An advance, actually, is only a loan of money from the publisher, to be paid back over time when sales are reported and royalties are paid to the author. And believe it or not, I’ve had clients who made more money selling subsidiary or secondary rights than they made during the initial sale of the manuscript.
I say it all the time, but I firmly believe that now is the best time ever to be a writer because you have options! The stigma of vanity publishing, aka self-publishing, has been diminished to the extent that few outside of the publishing business care about where a book is published. There are also a host of new indie publishers cropping up that specialize, regionalize, and otherwise help you get your book into the hands of readers. Some agents and other publishing professionals are also now offering assisted self-publishing services if you don’t want to go it alone. And there are digital-first imprints at every major Big 5 traditional publisher. Some are even crowdsourced!
It’s easy to understand the value of e-books and print books as the primary rights in the publishing equation. If you’re traditionally published, the first paragraph in your publishing contract boldly states that the publisher is licensing print and e-book rights (and maybe more) when you sign on the dotted line (for more on contracts, read The Short Fuse Guide to Book Publishing Contracts by Emily S. Keyes). But there are so many more ways to sell your story, and it is mandatory that you understand what you’re giving away so you can make the best decisions about it.
Secondary or subsidiary rights can make an author as much money as, if not more than, the advance. Examples of subsidiary rights include foreign language translations, audiobooks, dramatic (movie/TV), commercial, merchandise, graphic novels, book clubs and some more recent additions such as enhanced ebooks, videogames, spin offs, podcasts, fan fiction, etc. The value of each of these subrights depends on your book’s genre and marketability. If your memoir does not lend itself to comic book adaptation, you might want to leave that right with the publisher, for example. But if you’ve got a book that would make a fantastic television series, or you have a cousin who is a talented actor and has offered to be the voice talent on an audiobook version of your thriller, keep those rights.
If you self-publish, the equation gets much easier. You simply have all these rights already and can shop them yourself or hire an agent to do this one part of your publishing effort. I have made self-published clients a lot of money by selling the subrights to books they self-published while I try to interest a traditional publisher in a new, unpublished book or series.
This is a good introduction on subrights. I’ll talk more in-depth about this in a future post.
