Dear Miss Snark:
If the publisher acquires world rights to a novel and takes 25% of any foreign sales, crediting the remaining 75% to the author’s royalty statement, does the author’s domestic agent take an additional 15% off of the top once that royalty statement earns out? Put another way, can the author expect to net roughly 60% of any foreign sales? Thanks for any insight on this.
Yup, you pay us coming AND going. If you retain foreign rights your agent is going to probably use a foreign rights agent to sell the work overseas and you'll pay her, AND me. Those Urdu translations really add up.
5 comments:
Since most foreign rights commission % doesn't add up to be more than 25% at the MOST, I think it's smart to keep the foreign rights for yourself.
What do you think, Miss Snark?
Unless the publisher has a well oiled efficient and effective foreign rights department I keep them.
That 60% is still money you wouldn't have seen otherwise.
We kept foreign rights, and the two agents split 20 %. So I get 80 %. By all means keep foreign rights.
And of course, it always comes down to leverage.
There are a few houses that insist on buying World rights and you have to have a lot of leverage to politely talk them out of that desire.
: )
For the most part, I'm with Miss S, they are worth keeping. There's a lot of money to be made via translation rights.
Also (and if I remembering correctly, Miss Snark doesn't rep romance), in this genre, it can be advantageous for the agent to allow the publishing house World for a brand new romance author.
Harlequin, for example, is an an incredible foreign rights machine for their titles. Often a new author will earn more money via the Harlequin overseas machine than if I kept them and tried to sell them separately.
Just some thoughts.
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