Congratulations on your book deal. Now don’t get ripped off by your publisher’s subsidiary rights grab.

The basics of publishing contracts are simple: the publisher agrees to pay you (the author) money up front (an advance) and royalties on book sales, and in exchange you give the publisher exclusive rights to print and sell copies of your book and keep part of the proceeds.

But as the economics of publishing have gotten worse for publishers, I’m starting to see contracts that, given what the publishers are paying, reserve far more rights for the publisher than they deserve. Advances are down, rights grabs are up.

In the euphoria of getting a publishing offer, it’s easy to ignore these issues, but those are decisions you’ll regret, especially if the book is successful. You want to make sure that your publishing contract doesn’t foreclose opportunities you’ll have to exploit the book in other channels.

Note that hybrid publishers are not nearly as greedy about rights as traditional publishers. I’ll say more about that at the end of this post.

Get an agent or a publishing lawyer

The best way to make sure you’re protected is to work with an experienced literary agent. Agents not only have seen hundreds of contracts, they’ve also observed the latest rights grabs and provisions that publishers are inserting into contracts. And they talk to each other to keep up to date. Your best protection is an agent.

Whether you have an agent or not, it pays to have your contract reviewed by a lawyer familiar with book contracts. (In some agencies, the legal review is included free in the agent’s work.) You need a publishing lawyer, not a corporate lawyer, startup lawyer, or family lawyer. Only a lawyer familiar with book contracts will know which provisions are usual and common in book contracts, and which the publisher is including just to see if they can get away with it.

Let me be clear that I’m no lawyer and I will not review your publishing contract. What you’re reading here is based on my experience with authors, but you still need a professional to help you understand what is and what ought to be in your contract. Do not interpret this post as legal advice.

The most important right is the copyright

The copyright should be in the name of the author or the author’s company, not the publisher.

The reason is simple. Regardless of what the contract allows or prohibits, the owner of the copyright controls what happens in unanticipated situations.

If you, the author, own the copyright, the contract basically says “This is a list of the publisher’s exclusive rights to do things (like publish and sell the book) with the author’s content.” If it’s not listed, you likely can do it.

If the publisher owns the copyright, the contract basically says “Here are the things you, the author, are allowed to do with the content you created.” If it’s not in there, you’ll have to ask for permission to do it.

Wouldn’t you rather be in the position of granting the publisher rights, rather than the publisher granting you rights to your own content?

For at least 15 years, the default has been for the copyright to remain with the author. Even so, I’ve seen publishers (including Wiley, for example) write contracts in which the publisher retains the copyright. In practical terms, the publisher is unlikely to block the author from doing anything beneficial to the book, but why should you even be in the position of asking for permission?

If you doubt me on this, just take 20 random books off your bookshelf and check the copyright page. You’ll see that nearly all of them are copyrighted in the name of the author. This includes nearly all fiction and nonfiction books these days.

If the publisher’s initial contract says the copyright belongs to them, ask them to switch it; they generally will, without changing any financial terms. If they refuse to switch it, you’ve probably got a bad deal and a bad partner.

(There is are exceptions here. If you’re writing a book mostly based on a publisher’s or somebody else’s intellectual property, they may retain the copyright. For example, “for Dummies” books are copyrighted by the publisher, Wiley, because they control the franchise. Spinoff books in movie or TV franchises are copyrighted by the owner of the franchise. And textbook publishers often attempt to retain the rights to books they publish so they can produce additional materials for them without paying the author.)

What rights do publishers normally retain?

The publisher’s main right is the exclusive right to publish the first edition of the book in its original language in its original market. (For the sake of simplicity in this post, I’ll assume that’s English in the US market; you can substitute your own language and market in what follows.)

Publishers will usually retain rights to sell the English edition in other markets, such as Canada, the UK, Ireland, and India. Even in non-English speaking markets, business professionals often read business books in English, so having those books available in those markets in English is useful. Big publishers like Harvard Business Press and Harper Collins typically have effective international distribution networks and you’ll make more money with them than in futile attempts to retain international distribution rights for yourself.

Publishers usually retain additional rights, including the right to publish a paperback edition and ebook editions. Sometimes these rights are left to the author to sell or exercise separately, but the publisher normally is in the best position to monetize these formats. Your agent or publishing lawyer can help ensure you get a fair share of the revenues from those editions.

Your contract will include provisions that say that you can’t use more than x% (typically 5% or 10%) of the book in other formats. The publisher wants to make sure you’re not going to repackage chapters 1-3 and sell them to some other publisher, where they will confuse the market and compete with the book.

Audiobooks rights are worth negotiating

These days, audiobooks make up a significant share of the market, especially for business books. You don’t want to just give away audiobook rights. But publishers, of course, know this, and want to retain the rights for themselves (and pay you a royalty on the units they sell).

When comparing offers from different publishers, the one that gives audiobook rights to the publisher should be richer. Offers that leave the audiobook rights with the author will have smaller advances.

If you do retain the audiobook rights, it’s relatively easy to produce and narrate your own audiobook with the help of an audio producer. You’ll get sales based on the marketing efforts you and the publisher have put in place for the print book. Of course, that’s why the publisher wants to keep those rights, too.

Foreign rights have value for popular books

These days, foreign (non-English language) publishers are conservative. They generally don’t publish translations of of English-language books until they’re selling well in their original market.

My first book, Groundswell, written with Charlene Li, sold quite well and was translated into 19 languages. There are Chinese editions of a number of my books, including Writing Without Bullshit. (I have no idea how my English-language-centric writing advice translates into Chinese; I’m curious about whether passive voice is as much of a problem in Mandarin as it is in English.)

Big publishers generally have a lot of foreign-rights relationships and will be in the best position to sell your book in other markets. Smaller publishers will often form a relationship with a foreign-rights agent who can pitch your book to foreign publishers — or they may leave those rights to you, and you can work with your own foreign-rights agent. Either way, don’t expect much action unless your book is already selling well in its original edition.

Foreign rights contracts are often structured like traditional publishing contracts: there is an advance payment and royalties for sales that generate enough to exceed the advance. Unless your book is hugely successful, the advance is all that matters. It’s rare for foreign publishers to pay out royalties. If your publisher has retained these rights, they’ll credit a portion of those foreign advances against your full book advance and that will (hopefully) help you to get more quickly to the point where you’re collecting royalties from the main publisher.

Ask for approval on the titles of translations. I’ve seen some pretty dumb titles on foreign-language books. And these days, you probably should insist that translations are not raw AI-generated text.

It will help if you can go to other countries to promote your book. For Groundswell, I went to China, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Spain, and Italy to promote foreign editions.

How much of the foreign-rights money do you get? That varies. Don’t assume that whatever is in the contract is standard. Your agent or publishing lawyer may be able to get a better deal for you.

Other rights aren’t worth as much. You still shouldn’t give them up for nothing.

Publishing contracts will often include clauses for other rights. These include:

• Serialization (not common these days)
• Courses.
• Multimedia
• Dramatic rights (turning your book into a movie, TV show, or play)
• Merchandising (Groundswell, the breakfast cereal!)

While the publisher will generally retain serialization rights, the rest ought to stay with you. A contract that includes broad rights for the publisher over lots of different formats is a red flag.

One author I work with recently told me that his publisher asked for complete ownership of all content covering podcasts, web publications, TV, movies, and social media posts — and all of that with no advance. He turned the publisher down, and that was definitely the right decision.

AI rights

Publishers will ask for the right to sell your content for training purposes for large language models (AI).

If you’re morally opposed, don’t give that up. If you’re not morally opposed, ask to get paid extra for it. Harper Collins has been selling those rights for $5,000 per book, split evenly between the publisher and the author, provided that the author agrees.

Don’t expect a huge windfall from this. From the AI company’s perspective, the value of any individual book is small. Unlike dramatic and foreign rights buyers, they’re a lot more interested in huge collections of books, not in your book in particular.

Right of first refusal

A publisher will often ask for right of first refusal on your next book. Basically, they want to get the first look at your next book before anyone else. It is very hard to get them to remove this provision. But you shouldn’t be afraid of this.

Basically, when you are preparing to write your next book, write a basic, pared-down proposal and send it to the publisher. The right of first refusal generally has a time limit to get an offer from the publisher, such as 60 days. At the end of 60 days if you get no offer, you’re free to sell the book to other publishers. If you get an offer that’s too low, refuse it, and you’re free to sell the book elsewhere. And if you get a huge offer, take it. You lose nothing.

The author should by default retain all the rights not written into the contract

There should be a clause in the contract that says you keep the rights that aren’t enumerated in it. This, combined with your retaining the copyright, keeps you in control when new formats arise (as AI rights just did in the last few years). Don’t sign a contract in which the publisher retains all the rights that aren’t enumerated, unless it’s for a franchise they already own like the Dummies books.

For legitimate hybrid publishers, none of this is likely to at issue

Hybrid publishers don’t pay advances. You pay the publisher to produce the book, and then get a bigger share of the revenues. In exchange for that, you should expect to keep nearly all of the rights.

You certainly will retain the copyright. The contract should be written in such a way that you can take that content and do whatever you want with it. You can create a workbook, write a play, make a podcast, or come out with a paperback a year later. The hybrid publisher wants to make it as attractive as possible to work with and pay them, so they’ll be generous with rights.

However, you may want to work with the hybrid publisher on some of these projects. For example, they’ll work with you on an audiobook and charge you a fee to help you produce and publish it. But the starting point is not “We own rights to your content” but “We want to help you monetize your content.” That’s a very different attitude.

This is one reason authors with hybrid publishers are more likely to be satisfied with their publisher, according to our recent author survey.

Sorry to rain on your parade

The moment that you’re proclaiming “I got a publishing deal” is exactly the moment when you’re most vulnerable to giving up rights you should be keeping.

Get an agent or lawyer. Try to get multiple offers. And be aware of which rights you should normally be giving up, and which you should be keeping. That’s the way to make sure you’re still happy once the book is published and successful and you’re ready to exploit it in every other medium you can think of.