Quote:
Originally Posted by apbschmitz
In my experience of this, foreign rights sales generally involved a translation of the text. So my English language book sold in Germany, was translated into German and I made a bit of additional money from the German publisher. The difference now, I suppose, is that a German reader can buy the English version on line with limited muss and fuss. But I wonder if or how book contracts have changed to deal with eBook/print versions of the book in translation in other countries. Anybody out there with recent experience?
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Translation is only one use of "foreign rights" sales... the other major usage has been US (sometimes with, sometimes without Canada), UK and Australia (all including associated areas) because, (as previously pointed out), publishers didn't operate on a worldwide basis... the current international conglomerates are a relatively recent development and publishers were originally far more area based down to some only operating in a single country. This is why it made absolutely no sense for an author to sell worldwide rights to a publisher as they didn't operate worldwide...