Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book General > Writers' Corner

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 10-21-2010, 01:24 PM   #1
craig8128
Member
craig8128 has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.craig8128 has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.craig8128 has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.craig8128 has a complete set of Star Wars action figures.
 
Posts: 17
Karma: 382
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Austin, Texas
Device: iPad
Publishers, Authors, and ebook Rights?

I have a question, and I hope that it is not too naive. I'm not sure what else to do but ask, and hopefully those of you with experience will enlighten me.

Here goes: as I understand it, in the 'traditional' publishing industry, a writer assigns copyright to their book to the publisher, and then the publisher prints the book.

There seem to be a great many out-of-print books that are not available in electronic format. Conceivably, an author could "self-re-publish" an ebook version of out-of-print book via Amazon or B&N or etc. But I don't seem to see much of that happening.

Why is this? Is it difficult to convince a publisher to hand back the necessary copyrights to an author? Or do most authors not feel it's worthwhile to release an electronic version? Or is this kind of thing happening all over and I'm just not noticing it for some reason?

(Or are my base assumptions simply wrong? I know this is a complicated ecology, sometimes agents are involved, and shortly after posting this question I caught the thread about "backlist ebook rights", which makes me wonder if publishers even own the ebook rights to older out-of-print books)

I'd greatly appreciate any light that anyone could shine on this. Thanks!

Craig

Last edited by craig8128; 10-21-2010 at 02:02 PM. Reason: trying to make it a more intelligent question :)
craig8128 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2010, 05:23 PM   #2
neilmarr
neilmarr
neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.neilmarr ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
neilmarr's Avatar
 
Posts: 7,216
Karma: 6000059
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Monaco-Menton, France
Device: sony
I'm afraid you are a little off here, Craig.

Authors do not abdicate 'copyright' when they sign with a publisher. They always hold that. What they do is to assign certain publication rights, which should be clearly and fully included in a formal contract for the protection of all parties. This will cover such things as print rights in various countries, film rights, ebook rights, foreign-language publication rights, etc, etc, bloody etc.

Normally these days, a publishing contract will specify digital rights. Until pretty recently, though, it often didn't because ebooks were an SF pipedream, which is why there's a grey area on some older agreements and a bit of a row going on between some authors, agencies and publishers as to who holds the rights to what.

It's a sticky wicket at times. That's why, I guess, new online stores like Amazon for Kindle run spot-checks on catalogue titles to make sure a publisher does hold indisputable digital rights (we've had two queries this week alone from Amazon -- fortunately, all our contacts are sound and can be immediately produced on demand from a retailer to establish our rights).

Ass-about tip, we were given ebook rights by a major publisher this week on a hardback/paperback title they'd put out of print -- pretty well letting die a retainers death because they have thousands of speculatively mass-run examples of the title gathering dust in a warehouse somewhere. They would not give us print rights to the book, even though we edited from original author raw copy, sub-contracted a new artist for inside illustration and re-designed text and provided a new cover becaus they hope to sell their remaining stock at some ridiculous dime-a-dozen rate to the bargain basement end of the industry.

The loser, of course, is the author and/or agency who didn't clearly set the ground rules in the original agreement.

It's a bloody pain in the Netherlands, but that's the way it cuts, Craig.

Cheers. Neil
neilmarr is offline   Reply With Quote
Advert
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
MacMillan Asks Authors for Backlist eBook Rights abookreader News 24 08-21-2010 03:58 AM
Promotion Posting Guidelines dreams Self-Promotions by Authors and Publishers 0 07-09-2010 02:23 PM
Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid Moejoe News 0 08-28-2009 05:26 PM
J.D. Salinger legal battle and authors rights AprilHare News 29 08-18-2009 06:31 AM
eMail publishers / Authors splat Workshop 0 09-03-2007 08:58 AM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 11:26 AM.


MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.