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Originally Posted by axel77
Thats not the way it runs. As the buyer usually doesn't have a clue how much money the rights are worth, thats why AFAIK publishers give you "revenue by sales" deals.
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Sort of. What you get is an initial payment that is considered an advance against future royalties. The amount of the advance will be determined by the negotiating ability of the author's agent, and the best guess the publisher can make on how well a title will do.
Many titles never "earn out", and don't earn more royalties more than the amount of the original advance, so authors don't see additional payments.
(And most agents try to negotiate a high enough initial advance that the book
won't earn out.)
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Also AFAIk even when you sell exclusively the copyright, the length it is valid depends on *your* life, not on the one who buys it.
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Exclusive sales of rights are rare these days. There is increasing recognition that a variety of rights are involved, with their own values. Back on the 50's and 60's, for example, Doubleday published a hardcover SF line, aimed at the library market. The contract they used specified that they got half of the royalties from a paperback sale. The sales to libraries covered their direct costs. The money from the paperback sale made their profit. You are unlikely see that sort of deal now.
What you do see is
work for hire contracts. Someone else owns the rights, and the author is paid a fee (and usually gets royalties) to write a book covered by them. A friend makes his living doing media tie-in novels as work for hire. He's writing books based on TV series or movies, using someone else's characters and settings.
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Dennis