Let’s say you’ve written a short story called “The Murky Waters Off Cape Right”. You send it into a publisher and they offer to “buy” it. What is it they are buying exactly? Most commonly you are selling them rights to publish the work. You aren’t selling them the ownership of your story. What you are selling them is “First Rights”
What are first rights? Simply stated: First Rights grant a publisher the right to be the first to publish your work. I know it’s not kosher to define something by using the words that you’re defining but that’s it. When a publisher purchases “The Murky Waters Off Cape Right” they are actually buying the license to be the first. The ownership remains with you, and all other rights are retained by you.
Keep in mind that you have many “First Rights” available for you to sell as they pertain to your work.
First North American Serial Rights - This allows a publisher to be the first in North America to publish your work. You can sell similar right elsewhere in other countries.
First Electronic Rights - This allows a publisher to be the first to publish the work online. This is where the waters start to become murky since online publishing is worldwide. Your work is basically out there for everyone to see in perpetuity. We’ll delve more into this later.
Second Serial Rights – Or “Reprint Rights”. If a publisher is the second one to publish your work, these are the rights you are selling them. It grants them one time rights to publish a previously published work.
Anthology Rights - This is pretty self-explanatory. This allows “The Murky Waters Off Cape Right” to be published in an anthology.
Language Rights - This right allows “The Murky Waters Off Cape Right” to be printed in other languages. You can sell Japanese Language Rights, German Language Rights, Klingon Rights, etc. You can even sell First World English Rights but in doing so you are unable to sell First Serial Rights to individual countries. Get it?
Coming Up Next Week… More on First World Electronic Rights
Also Read: Know Your Rights
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