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Originally Posted by dickon25
Out of interest (and one of our authors or publishers may be able to answer this) what is to stop an author negotiating with a single publisher and selling it the worldwide rights to a book, the whole shebang? Why do the rights packages have to be arranged in regional sections?
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What happens if a publisher isn't
active world wide? Offhand, I can't think of
any publisher that has subsidiaries selling books in
every country.
There will also be plenty of books that will only be of interest in specific countries.
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As I understand it, a UK author sells the UK/EU rights to say, Random House then will seperately sell the US/Can rights to a US publisher and so on for other regions. I know that different countries have differing copyright rules and that requires governments to act but, surely the publishers must realise that all media is now global and these restrictions will hurt them in the long run??
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Will it hurt them in the long run? Forget differing copyright rules. Let's say I'm a publisher in a European country. I bid for and get the rights to publish an edition in my country of an international best seller written in the US. I damn well
do want the exclusive rights to offer the book in my country, and will be quite unhappy about the book being available in my territory from other sources. I want to
stay in business.
And let's say I'm the author of that international best seller. I want the best deal I can get in terms of advances and royalties. Would that be with an all-inclusive deal with one mega-publisher (assuming there was one active any place my books might be sold), or am I better if my agent negotiates separately for foreign rights with different publishers in other countries? I'm willing to bet separate deals are better for me, because my agent can put my book up for auction internationally, with high bidder in each market winning.
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Dennis