But there’s one vast unexplored trap door on the “in print” provision of digital books. No one has yet challenged that an ebook download is legally a license and not a book sale (since the file is not actually sold at all, since the buyer doesn’t “own” it.) Eminem just won a huge case on that very issue–the big difference between sale royalties (10ish percent) and license royalties (50 percent.) Big case looming for some eager wealthy author.

Thanks for the answers and the advice. You’d think that publishing companies would have realized that it’s no longer the gold rush and that they need to change their strategies.

Have a great 2013!

And another thing you have to think about is recourse. What if the publisher continues to sell your book even after the license period has ended? As noted above, it is the wild west and navigating international law is expensive and in many cases ineffectual.

My advice is to hold on to your rights until all of this stuff is sorted out. But you are absolutely right. Foreign money as gravy for a huge bestseller makes sense. But if you have a backlist long tail book, every trickle of revenue is important and losing control of the trickles is to be avoided.
Shawn

Another great post (after the Hugh Howey/E.L James post).

I’ve got a question and an observation.

The observation is Hugh Howey again. His agent has sold foreign translation rights on the traditional method….and he is fine with both the sale AND paying an Agent 15% of the sale because he confesses that he just wouldn’t spend the time chasing that money himself. So as far as he’s concerned, it’s gravy.

So the observation is that whilst in principle what you advocate is sound – in practice how many self published writers are really going to go down the translation road? Obviously everyone is different, and few self published authors are going to be in the position that Steve is in with 10 years of ‘brand building’ courtesy of The War Of Art – but for a lot of authors I think the potential return on arranging translations of your work may outweigh the time invested in doing it properly.

With this in mind how about a third approach (as opposed to saying no and/or doing it yourself) – how about making a counter offer to foreign publishers and making a set period of time prior to reversion a contractual term. So say within 5 years of signing the contract, ALL rights in that language revert to the author unless a new deal is signed?

That way you can get your work published in a foreign language without having the hassle of arranging the work yourself – and then if you take off in that period you have the option in 5 years time of taking your work back and THEN self publishing it.

The worst case scenario is that the foreign companies say No – in which case you are back to walking away from the deal.

Hope that’s of interest.

I tell people these days the book business is like the Wild Wild West. The old model for publishing was truly broken. With the rise of ebook it has crashed, burned, and its ashes will never rise like a magickal creature. Instead small publishers are rewriting all the elements of that broken model. Thanks so much for this post! I’ll bet many authors and small publishers have never thought to handle the foreign translations of their books themselves. Yet almost every author is creating a worldwide fan base through the social media marketing we do every day to sell our books. Why should we give away this piece of the pie in a traditional foreign rights deal? You’re right. It makes no sense!

I look forward to seeing how you and Steve handle this process when you take the translation plunge. Thanks so much for this incredibly informative post!