Hi All:
That pesky life is catching up with me and I’ve been overwhelmed with “stuff” the last couple of days. I’ll try to do a blog of substance tomorrow, but for today, I thought I’d answer one question that was asked last week:
Donna asked:
I have a question about publishing rights for the author. Is it a given that the publishers keep the publishing rights indefinitely on the books they publish or is there the ability for the author to keep rights to republish it say ten or twenty years down the line?
Randy sez:
Most all publishing contracts allow the publisher to declare a book “out of print.” This means that:
1) The publisher is not printing more copies because sales are too slow to justify doing so right now.
2) The publisher does not guarantee that it will print more copies, even if its warehouse is totally empty.
It does not mean that the publisher has given up rights to print more copies later, if demand should pick up. So the book might be in limbo, with no copies available and with the publisher unwilling to print more. Most contracts specify that the book won’t remain in limbo indefinitely. The author has a right to request “reversion of rights” when a book has been out of print for a certain length of time.
Note that the publisher will typically want to liquidate its inventory before it reverts rights to the author. If there are only a few dozen copies left, then the author can buy the books back. Even if there are a few hundred left, the author might find it useful to buy them all, because usually you can get them very cheap. It sometimes happens that that there are many thousands of copies left unsold. Few authors can afford to buy all those copies, so it may take a while to liquidate them.
Eventually, the author should get the rights back.
One trend in contracts is to switch the book to Print On Demand when the publisher deems it not cost effective to print a big load of copies. In that case, the book will never technically go out of print (because POD books can be printed and shipped overnight). So this trend means that in the future, books will always be available.
Is that good or bad? I’m not sure. It sounds good to always have your book in print and available. However, you can bet the publishers will write the contract to be as favorable to them as possible. (Whoever writes the contract always does this, so don’t be too harsh on publishers.) It is up to you and your agent to tilt the table back your way by making sure the contract is fair.
In any event, this is a trend to watch.
Thank you very much, Randy. This is interesting and exciting information.
Thank you for answering my question! A big reason I asked was, well out of curiosity as a hopeful author and, because you had mentioned at least one of your earlier books being out of print and you had bought the final copies and wished it would go back into print. I remember some I read when I was a teen/young adult that I wish was still in print so I could reread them.
Thanks again.
One caution for the future on contracts. I go to a large church with many women’s Bible studies. One decided to use a book which was out of print. We contacted the writer, and she didn’t have enough copies. But she also didn’t have the rights. She had signed them away indefinitely.
Waterbrook, the publisher, would not release them, neither did they have any more copies. In order to get more, they wanted us to cough up the money to digitally archive the book for Print-on-demand, which is ten times as expensive for an older book because they have to scan it in page by page instead of accepting a digital file. (They charge $80 per hour.) The church opted not to do so, and we selected a different book.
I am told that in the old days, the contract usually expired after a certain number of years, but now they do not. Since Print-on-demand reduces the risk of loss (at least in the printing part) to the publisher down to under $100, these open-ended contracts seem to be very much in the publisher’s favor without any substantial benefit to the writer.
Thanks–very helpful.