Author ebook rights

If e-rights are not mentioned at all, it is difficult to see how your publisher could exploit them without your permission. How could they even set an e-book royalty percentage without a contract addendum? Who owns rights to the images? A must-read for any author of illustrated books! What territorial rights do they have? The answer to this question may be different for the text versus the images creating another bind! See Publishers Weekly article here, plus illuminating comments by agent Robert Gottlieb.

If it is not stated in the agreement normally it is then a reserved right to the author. In most cases, the author will say yes, but not all. There are also some literary agents advocating separate negotiation of digital rights. Even if a publisher holds the digital rights, some contracts still need to be amended.

So just because a publisher publishes a book in print, it may not yet have the full legal right to publish the same book in digital format. These processes can take time; additional complicating factors are the need to update digital rights management systems and royalty tracking and payment systems.

Most publishers are actively grappling with digital rights and all that entails; for a few, however, it is all just too hard. However, that does not mean that the publisher has the right to distribute a book, in any format, worldwide. The publishing contract usually gives the publisher the right to sell or license subsidiary rights to the work, including territorial rights. In traditional print publishing, a publisher usually takes on a book because it thinks it can sell the book into its main markets.

Selling into other countries is accomplished in a number of ways, however attempting to sell from afar through an intermediary is rarely lucrative. Managing these relationships can take more time and effort than it is worth, and so publishers came up with another solution: sales of territorial rights. Rights sales are the main business of large trade fairs such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, particularly territorial rights in the form of translation and reprint rights.

These rights are traded between publishers. A publisher will buy from a foreign publisher the usually exclusive right to produce and distribute a book in their own particular territory. This gives publishers access to books they would not otherwise produce, and allows publishers and authors to make money from sales in a country into which they would not otherwise sell.

Many publishers want digital sales to mirror the print territorial restrictions — what publisher would buy print rights to a book when a they cannot also have the digital rights, and b the digital rights-holder can sell into their territory reaping the sales benefit of their marketing spend?

And who wants to risk a lawsuit for breach of contract if these rights are ignored? Accordingly, publishers have been at pains to educate ebook distributors on territorial rights, who are in turn imposing territory restrictions — much to the frustration of the ebook-buying public who will find ways to circumvent these restrictions.

Territorial restrictions on book distribution in the legal rights sense should not be confused with territorial restrictions which may exist for other reasons.

Complicated in fact. Ideally, the agreement between the author and publisher anticipates potential problems by setting down in writing all of the parties' rights and obligations. But what about new uses not contemplated at the time the parties were negotiating the terms of the book contract? Unfortunately, many pre-Internet publishing contracts did not expressly deal with what rights would be granted to the publisher beyond print-related subsidiary rights.

With rapid advances in new technology, old contracts are now being dusted off and language scrutinized to answer the question who controls various new rights created by recent technological developments.

Due to ambiguities and omissions in many older publishing agreements, questions such as "Who controls e-book 1 rights? Random House v. In its suit, Random House is claiming ownership of e-book rights to eight RosettaBooks' titles, including backlist bestsellers such as Sophie's Choice and Slaughterhouse Five.

In its complaint, Random House argues that its author-publisher agreement provides it with the sole right to publish e-books. It bases its argument on the interpretation of certain pre-Internet contracts between Random House and its authors.

Since contracts are not drafted in a vacuum, courts may also look at industry practice. Most likely, the court will ask whether distribution of books in digital form were recognized by knowledgeable people in the publishing industry at the time the contracts were drafted. Cases addressing whether older entertainment industry contracts granted rights for new uses such player piano rolls, radio, motion pictures, television and videocassettes are plentiful.

Like Random House, motion picture studios once claimed that they already had the right to exhibit films on television, and to distribute them as home videos. Regrettably, the cases and basic principles governing contract interpretation are anything but clear.

The New York Approach New York has adopted a rule of contract interpretation that some have categorized as pro large business, or favoring the publisher or producer over the licensee. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Inc. Pictures, all of its motion picture rights in a popular musical play.

The case broadly stands for the proposition that contracting parties should be held accountable for the reasonable interpretation of their agreements. In holding the scope of a music license included home video, the court emphasized the broad terms of the grant and the fact that motion picture producers would be reluctant to explore and utilize innovative technologies if such contracts were interpreted in favor of the grantor.

Bartsch , in attempting to get the proper result, may have turned copyright jurisprudence on its head. The Restatement Second of Contracts states that an agreement susceptible to more than one interpretation should be construed against the party who drafted the language. The California Approach Opposite coasts, opposite results.

It is at peace with one the primary goals of copyright law -- to protect authors from unintentional grants of their exclusive rights in their creative works. Paramount Pictures Corp. Focusing on the means by which videocassettes were viewed and distributed i.

Ebooks are one of the fastest-changing parts of the market, both because the Author's Guild and many agents and authors believe the royalty percentages should be higher for authors on ebook sales and because the technology for e-reading is expanding so quickly. It's definitely a space to watch. Thanks for giving me the heads-up about enhanced ebooks, Susan! Sci fi freak that I am, I've always dreamed about that concept I want smells! Well, maybe not all the time And it's always good to know the kind of language to watch for in a contract.

I'm glad I could put the information out there, Fae - it's so important for authors to know what the possibilities are, in order to make informed decisions when signing contracts and planning for publishing options.

Click here to take a look! I'm building a Susan Spann library of "what to look out for" in the event I get another contract. I don't want to make the same mistakes I made last time - or at least I want to know it's a mistake before I agree to it! Once again, I enjoy and learn from your contract information. Thanks Susan! I've shared generously online. I write short stories and have several published in Cricket Magazine.

I grant Cricket Media "non-exclusive license in the Work and the copyrights corresponding thereto that allows: "Right to be the first to publish the work anywhere in the world in any language or in any manner and to be sole publisher of the work for a period of 60 days after such first publication Unlimited rights to reprint all or part of work in any manner, volume, anthology, publication, language, or format for sale or otherwise Unlimited rights to reproduce, distribute, or display work on electronic databases, online networks, interactive multimedia, digital-based media, etc.

If requested by you in writing, Cricket will display appropriate copyright notice in connection with any publication or other display of work. Susan, does this mean that I cannot use my story--after the 60 day first right time to Cricket--to create an e-book myself to sell, profits to me?