The Ideal Book Contract Management Tool
You know you can do more with your intellectual property rights but the publisher holds all the subrights. I bet every author knows exactly what I’m talking about.
In a traditional print book contract, many publishers acquire not only the right to publish the print version of a book but many other rights as well.
In the course of your career you may well hit this problem: your publisher either stopped answering the phone or responding to emails; no longer renders royalty statements or payments; or has actually declared bankruptcy or informed you they are insolvent.
Yikes.
Royalty Reminder Co-Founder Ethan Ellenberg was interviewed on the most recent episode of the “Inside Independent Publishing” podcast. The podcast is affiliated with the Independent Book Publishers Association, an organization that serves the independent publishing community from author-publishers to bigger outlets.
The novel you’ve written and published is the foundation of your income, and the best case scenario is exploiting as many intellectual property rights as you can.
Most of your money will come from sales of the actual book. That book will have a number of formats, print, ebook and audiobook. It can also be translated into a host of languages.
Then things will start to get a little complicated, because it can also be the basis of other media. That is what I want to discuss now.
This is not something new. This has always been a confusing corner of the business. Let me provide some context.
The rapid changes in book publishing have created a dilemma for many authors with a traditional publishing contract.
How should you interpret those contracts? How do you go about the thorny business issues related to managing your books that are in print? Finding out which books are not in print, and reverting rights to those books?