When seeking representation for traditional publication, should you expect to sell or keep the rights to your book?

[Guest]

I know my questions are difficult, but I am confident that there are experts among you who will help me.

[J P McAndrew]

You keep the rights. You basically license the rights to the publisher.

[Jeff]

I mean ... the whole point is that you're selling the rights. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the traditional publisher would be paying for. You can't ask them to take all the financial risk and then also not even have publishing rights on top of that. That'd be madness.

Now, hey, you're welcome to negotiate. If you're a first-time published author, you're not gonna have a lot of leverage, but your agent can help you with this. You can also reach out to a book contract lawyer if you feel you need more specific legal advice on the contract. So, you can push back on film rights, audio, sales in particular countries/regions, that sort of thing. The publisher probably wants everything they can reasonably get, but they might budge on certain items. If there's something you feel strongly enough about, there's nothing stopping you from asking for it. Just decide what you're willing to walk over, and what you'll give up if they don't seem to be budging.

Don't miss: Is it too late to submit my books to a traditional publisher after self-publishing on Amazon?

[Shayne]

They can't publish the book if they don't have some rights. The author would sell first print rights to the publisher for a certain length of time, but they would keep their copyright.

[Steve]

This has crossed my mind as well. Following this excellent question.