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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 29351 Registered: 11-1998 |
Excerpt from: “The Business of Writing: Minding the Details, An introduction to the financial and legal aspects of selling your writing,” from 2000 Writer's Market TYPES OF RIGHTS "First Serial Rights. First serial rights means the writer offers a newspaper or magazine the right to publish the article, story or poem for the first time in any periodical. All other rights to the material remain with the writer. The qualifier "North American" is often added to this phrase to specify a geographical limit to the license. When material is excerpted from a book scheduled to be published and it appears in a magazine or newspaper prior to book publication, this is also called first serial rights. One-Time Rights. A periodical that licenses one-time rights to a work (also known as simultaneous rights) buys the nonexclusive right to publish the work once. That is, there is nothing to stop the author from selling the work to other publications at the same time. Simultaneous sales would typically be to periodicals without overlapping audiences. Second Serial (Reprint) Rights. This gives a newspaper or magazine the opportunity to print an article, poem or story after it has already appeared in another newspaper or magazine. Second serial rights are nonexclusive, that is, they can be licensed to more than one market. All Rights. This is just what it sounds like. If you license away all rights to your work, you forfeit the right to ever use it again. If you think you'll want to use the material later, you must avoid submitting to such markets or refuse payment and withdraw your material. Ask the editor whether he is willing to buy first rights instead of all rights before you agree to an assignment or sale. Some editors will reassign rights to a writer after a given period, such as one year. It's worth an inquiry in writing. Electronics Rights. These rights cover usage in a broad range of electronic media, from online magazines and databases to CD-ROM magazine anthologies and interactive games. The magazine contract should specify if, and which, electronic rights are included. The presumption is that unspecified rights are kept by the writer. Subsidiary Rights. These are the rights, other than book publication rights, that should be covered in a book contract. These may include various serial rights; movie, television, audiotape and other electronic rights; translation rights, etc. The book contract should specify who controls these rights (author or publisher) and what percentage of sales from the licensing of these sub rights goes to the author. Dramatic, Television and Motion Picture Rights. This means the writer is selling his material for use on the stage, in television or in the movies. Often a one-year option to buy such rights is offered (generally for 10% of the total price). The interested party then tries to sell the idea to other people, actors, directors, studios or television networks, etc. Some properties are optioned over and over again, but most fail to become dramatic productions. In such cases, the writer can sell his rights again and again, as long as there is interest in the material. Though dramatic, TV and motion picture rights are more important to the fiction writer than the nonfiction writer, producers today are increasingly interested in nonfiction material; many biographies, topical books and true stories are being dramatized." *************** From: http://www.writing-world.com/rights/rights.shtml EXCLUSIVE VS. NONEXCLUSIVE RIGHTS "What does it mean when a publication wants "exclusive" or "nonexclusive" rights to something? When a publication asks for exclusive rights, they are asking that the piece not appear anywhere else while they are exercising their right to it. There is often a limit on the length of time a publisher will request exclusive rights -- one month, three months, one year -- and then that piece may appear elsewhere. Nonexclusive is just the opposite; Publisher A may feature your piece on their website for a year, but because their right to do so is nonexclusive, you can sell the piece to Publisher B and have it appear elsewhere at the same time. Just make sure Publisher B doesn't want exclusivity! The "nonexclusive right to display, copy, publish, distribute, transmit and sell digital reproductions" means you are allowing your material to be sold elsewhere, by someone else. This does not mean that you will see any profits from these arrangements. It does mean that you can sell your own work to other places at the same time -- but be aware that the original purchaser may make your material available to fee-based databases or other content sources without ever reimbursing you another penny." . |
