Publishing rights

This may be very obvious to some, but I really don't understand how this process works, so maybe you all can enlighten me.

I often see references to small press/private press publishers having trouble securing rights for books, and especially talk about how they couldn't get extra 100-200 copies secured. This is the part that confuses me: isn't it in the author's (or estate's, in case of dead authors) interest to get as many books published as possible? Presumably, the more rights they grant, the more they get paid, plus more people get to read their work, if we go the money-is-not-an-incentive-to-write route. I guess I don't really get what the downside is for the author to grant more rights. The best I can come up with is that their original publisher many not like someone else publishing this work, but in the case of private presses, is someone like Random House really worried about someone like Lyra's books taking customers away? I'm sure there's an obvious explanation here that I'm missing, so I'd be really happy to get this cleared up.

I've got quite a bit of experience with this. I think there are three common misconceptions which might demystify the process:

1. An author or artist themself is almost never the permissions granter, unless they are unrepresented (which usually means they haven't achieved mainstream success in their field). Permissions are granted from one publisher/representative to another. So, for example, I worked with Markus Zusak on an edition of his "The Failurist". We chatted back and forth about it, he agreed to the project, he agreed to sign copies, he agreed to promote the book, etc. Still, at the end of the day, I had to get permission not from him, but from Curtis Brown, his publisher. This was relatively straightforward, since Markus made the introduction. Or, take another project (which is shipping shortly), "Above All Else Do Not Lie". This project had the endorsement of Chimamanda Adichie and Michael McCurdy, and then after Michael's passing, Deborah McCurdy. Still, the formal agreements were signed with the Wiley Agency and Writers House LLC, their representatives, who could have simply declined to allow the project to move forward.

If you know the author/artist a priori that can speed up the process a bit, because they can make introductions. It helps a lot to have an "in". If a publisher says that they "weren't able to secure rights," that probably means that they emailed and never got a response, not that they were rejected on the merits of their request. Oftentimes these things are about who you know. Our friend on this very forum shadekeep introduced me to the the son of Jack Vance, the prolific Sci-Fi forefather, who granted No Reply permission (via Spatterlight Press, Vance's publisher) to publish our upcoming edition of Vance's work.

2. The rights granting process for most agencies and publishers is not detail-oriented. Sometimes there's just a form you fill out. Usually, you send an inquiry and hear back in six months with a generic permissions form and a formulated fee.

3. Fine press is oftentimes too small for many permissions granters to bother with. It's small potatoes compared to what they usually deal with. "What's the downside of granting rights?" might well be answered with, "What's the upside?" – Small money, small distribution, small everything.

The easiest permissions I've ever received was for Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize Address. I emailed the Nobel Prize Permissions Department, and received an email fifteen minutes later with a legal document conferring me permission to reprint up to 500 copies – and for free. (Sweden is the best.)

The hardest permission I've ever received was for an Isaac Asimov story – forthcoming from No Reply Press – which took three years of constant emails back and forth.

The biggest disappointment was when I tried to get permission for "Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather. Her estate representative was very amenable and after a few phone calls I thought we were good to go, but then he demanded that I send one copy of each of No Reply's books for him to review before we could have permission (including those for which we had no copies left).

A very typical case was when I got permission for Thornwillow's "The Great Gatsby". I think it was from Scribner's. Very straightforward. Sent a permissions inquiry, got a reply three months later, agreed to a per-copy fee, was sent a contract, and signed it.

As a general rule, and perhaps counter-intuitively to some, the bigger the author, the easier it is to get permission. There are exceptions, of course, like JRR Tolkein. But big authors are usually represented by big companies with big permissions departments where it just takes some guy to stamp "APPROVE" on your request to make it happen. Also, big publishers are increasingly automating the process. Give the Copyright Clearance Center a spin and see what you can get permissions for:

https://www.copyright.com/

I'm personally interested in the way copyright/permissions skew *what* gets published. I once talked to the author of high school English textbooks who explained how for every excerpt, passage, or quotation he used in the textbook which was written after 1922 (the Grand Copyright Cutoff), he'd make a few cents less per copy of the book sold, because the royalty payment would decrease the book's profit. His direct incentive, then, was to fill the textbook with pre-1922 out-of-copyright stuff. You could imagine how that might affect the perspectives, styles, experiences, etc. included in the textbook.

>2 grifgon:

Very informative. Thanks!

>2 grifgon: will No Reply be Publishing Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize Address? Or was this with Thornwillow or elsewhere?

Also, I hope your upcoming Asimov story is a different choice than Thornwillow’s upcoming dispatch.

>5 Esoterics: I haven't used the Toni Morrison rights yet. Not sure if I will.

'Tis a different Asimov.

>2 grifgon: Fascinating stuff, thanks! I suspect that there are further hoops to jump through if you are going to do something like extract from or translate a work, rather than use the existing work as-is. And I imagine there are provisos that allow the granter to withdraw if they feel the work is being used in a negative or harmful way, or produced in a manner not of the quality originally stated.

>2 grifgon: That's a bummer on the Willa Cather, that would be amazing to see a No Reply edition of my favorite so far of her work. My Antonia has been done pretty well by the LEC. The Folio Society of Death Comes to the Archbishop is nice but not No Reply nice!

So for something like The Awakening, wink wink nod nod, which I believe has entered the public domain, it would be a case of verifying that it was indeed public domain and whether there were any other "entanglements" before a private press was to publish it?

>8 jveezer: The LEC did A Lost Lady not My Antonia.

>9 BuzzBuzzard: Oops. Correct!

And then there's the problem of obtaining rights to a work still in copyright but for which you can't contact the copyright holder, either because you can't locate them or perhaps even identify them. For example, I have made several attempts to contact the copyright holder for a short story (the author in this case) I would like to reprint, but she seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. She hasn't been actively publishing since 2003 and her last publisher was deaf to my inquiry. She has effectively gone dark. Heck, she could be kaput by now for aught I know. That would make it even harder, as I would have to attempt to identify the current rights holder.

Obtaining rights can really be a royal pain.

>11 Glacierman: It is, and it's the same in other fields as well. I did a stint for a while as a rights locator for a game publisher. I pursued the rightholders of half a dozen games and in the end was only able to get two of the titles brought back to market. Many years later a third I had worked on finally emerged as well. You would think the internet makes everything findable, but if you're looking for someone or something from before the mid-90s, it can be surprisingly difficult.

Interesting discussion, however I don't think I see anything answering OP's question on the limitation. Understandably a limitation on a hand-crafted, signed edition would be based on the workload and materials involved, but why would the rights-holders put a max on that number if more copies could be accommodated, say 250 vs. 500?

>13 vicwong: I hesitate to even guess at what odd logic or prejudices a rights holder may have.

>13 vicwong: When a permissions agreement is signed, it stipulates a maximum number of copies. ("No more than 500 copies...") On multiple occasions I've asked to amend that maximum upwards after the fact and have never had a problem. I'm not really sure why a rights holder would accept, say, a maximum of 500 copies but not 600. Perhaps it might have to do with how many copies an author is willing to sign? Or just a small white lie to explain an artificial limitation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>15 grifgon: Besides the many other reasons why a publisher might be more comfortable with a low limitation, there is the possibility that these amounts have become a kind of de facto standard in the business. At least I would assume as much if there are certain magic numbers that come up again and again (500, 1000, 25, etc). It could be that Publisher A sees that Publisher B has allowed a small run of fine press editions of some of their holdings in these numbers, and this acts as a pre-vetting of the process to them. Easier to trust a path that others have blazed ahead of you. The flipside of which is the reluctance to go higher than others have, thereby veering into the risky unknown.

In my experience over the last couple of decades, it’s always worked along these lines, and yes, rights are a pain and can take ages. You have to first find out who owns the underlying rights, and they will then contact the agent of the author. If you know the author, their agent will send an approval to the underlying rights holders.
The usual financial pattern is:
10% of cover price paid up front, sometimes the publishing rights holders will agree 50% up front and 50% on publication, although that seems to be rarer than a few years ago.
More well-known titles can ask for more.
It can take many months to negotiate rights if estates are involved, as they are often split between a couple of parties. They nearly all want an approval of images, sometimes approval on cover designs.
Bear in mind, for most Fine Press Publishers, these costs are paid a year or two before you can do a pre-order.
If the author is alive and you want signatures, you will have to deal with their agents for fees and timings etc.
They will, most times, want specs on each edition, how many you will produce for each edition and approximate cover prices, which as you don’t know what the artist, if illustrated, will want, nor what sort of paper, bindings will cost a year or so ahead, is usually based on previous published editions.
It is a time consuming and expensive business.

It is all a royal pain in the arse for sure. I've been fortunate in most cases but a few times I've just been completely blown off. Foreign language texts translated but still under US copyright can be circumvented by offering a new translation, provided it is done by someone qualified to do so.

My most difficult project was a Hemingway broadside followed closely by my forthcoming 2nd Kafka short story, The Hunter Gracchus of which I tried to secure the Muir's translation. No response for years so new translation. I was far luckier getting Breon Mitchell involved for In the Penal Colony right off the bat. Then there are just life stuffs that get in the way - Ladislav Hanka and I were all set to do a book with Barry Lopez but then his divorce just blew it all up with the money stuff so scrapped though it did appear in Orion magazine.

As for edition size, 75 was a big stretch for The Wind in the Willows for a one man operation but I figured there would be demand. Most future editions will not exceed 50. I've never run into the problem of asking for too much.

A good place to start tracking down copyright holders is the WATCH site hosted by the Harry Ransom Center and The University of Reading:
https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/watch/index.cfm

>18 DWPress: Thanks, never seen that before, it's a shame they only tell you the agents, not who owns the underlying rights though, thank you, that could come in handy.

>18 DWPress: Great resource!

Another thing I forgot to mention, is that you have to solve and navigate international rights, and the split of the % to each territory, US and Europe and the commonwealth, each will often have different contracts that have to be dovetailed into each other, you could close a deal in one territory and not another, which if you plan to sell world wide has to be negotiated or it causes problems.

This is a fantastic post and frankly it is impressive that small press publishers are able to produce and sell books at the price points that they do. This is but one instance of the many hurdles to clear before revenue (let alone profit) comes in the door. Truly a labor of love. Much appreciation for what you all do. 👏

Truly my least favorite part of making books and why it sometimes takes years to bring a title to the buyers and why sometimes it's just not worth it at all (time and money). Once it is on the press and in the bindery things are a matter of craft and competency leaving all that silly paperwork to be on hand in the filing cabinet. As they say - the fastest way to make a small fortune in printing is to start with a large one.

On behalf of my and my fellow makers. You are all very welcome and thank you!

Guessing someone like Thomas Pynchon has made it very clear that he doesn't want to be involved with limiteds. Even Easton Press hasn't been able to publish anything from him.

>2 grifgon: Great post as always, thanks.

I'm mostly interested in cases like the Willa Cather that you describe. If I understand correctly, they passed up on virtually free money (ok, they'd have to draft a contract and sign it, but it's really not much work), but for what? This is what I'm struggling with, why would they go ahead and make this process complicated and then drop the project over this really weird demand? What is the incentive here?

The Limited Editions Club had announced that Babbitt was going to be one of the books of the Fifteenth Series (Nov 1943 - Oct 1944). Their original intention to commission Grant Wood for the illustrations remained unfulfilled due to his untimely death. So they choose to go with Boardman Robinson instead. Everyone familiar with the history of the club knows that this project did not come to fruition. I was not aware of the reasons until I read the monthly letter for Tales of The Gold Rush:

The edition of Babbitt, which we announced in our Prospectus, will not come into being. This is because we were not able to conclude arrangements with Harcourt Brace and Company, the owners of the copyright in that work. When we were preparing our Prospectus, we innocently expected no difficulty with the Harcourt people. For we had some years ago amiably made an arrangement with them for the publication of Main Street: and we had already obtained Sinclair Lewis' blessing for the production of a companion edition of Babbitt. But new conditions, and the fact that the Harcourt firm is under new management, conspired to cause the deal to fall through.