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Selling the Right Rights
Why every writer should understand the rights they create in everything they write, and why it’s important to keep hold of as many of them as possible.
Notes: This article first appeared in Writing Magazine in July 2014. (*= affiliate link: I sometimes use affiliate links in my posts. This won’t cost you anything, but if you go on to buy from a link I may earn a small commission.)
When an editor buys a piece of work from us and their acceptance email drops into our inbox, we’re entitled to do the Happy Celebratory Dance. (You do do the Happy Celebratory Dance, don’t you?) After all, we’ve a right to be proud that an editor wants to publish our carefully crafted words.
But we mustn’t let the Happy Celebratory Dance cloud our business judgement. A business transaction is taking place, and it’s not just our words that we’re handing over.
Whenever we create a piece of writing, copyright law automatically grants us the copyright in that creation. It’s this copyright that allows us to exploit all of the other rights in our work, giving us the potential to generate an income from it.
Retain careful control of our rights and it’s possible that a piece of work can generate income for us from many different…
