Why you should license your book’s foreign rights, and how
Publish & Prosper did an excellent episode on securing foreign licensing rights if you’re a self-published author. While books are already sold internationally, if you’re a bestseller or have a popular book in English, why wouldn’t you want to have the book translated into other languages and sold in the countries where people speak those languages?
Traditional publishing houses usually handle foreign rights and sometimes authors don’t earn any profits on the foreign titles of their book, which is not okay!
Licensing the foreign rights for your book involves working with a buyer in another region who purchases the licensing rights to your book. They’ll secure contracts, get your book translated, and change the book cover to make it culturally appropriate. A buyer will make every attempt to sell it in their region. Licensing can also involve audiobooks and TV/film adaptations of your book.
Currently, nonfiction titles are more popular in foreign markets than fiction.
DropCap says translated books make up 35% of all global book revenue (in the double digit billions), which makes sense since bestsellers often have the highest chance of being sold in foreign markets.
Reasons for selling your book in foreign markets
If your book’s underperforming in your own country, you could offset that and over-perform in another market based on their cultural needs, what’s going on, what’s trending, and what’s hot over there. Maybe cozy mysteries are dying in the US, but Italians are into cozy Amish vampire mysteries right now.
Speak another language fluently? You could promote your book in countries that speak that language. If you’re interested in expanding your brand into a foreign market, a book is a great way to test the waters and get your name and your brand out there.
If you have a lot of newsletter subscribers from one country or you access to your customer sales data, you might notice you have a lot of readers located outside your country. Maybe it’s worth a shot to get your book listed with a foreign rights entity in those areas.
If you keep up with publishing or market trends outside of your country, you might notice there’s a hot new trend in a foreign market and your book fits perfectly into that.
In the end, trying to license the foreign rights to your book will tell you whether your book is a good fit.
How do you secure foreign licensing rights as an author?
If your book’s a bestseller, a publisher or overseas buyer might reach out to you directly. They will have come across your book, noticed there was really good buzz about it online, or they think it would be a good fit for their market and want to talk to you about licensing the rights to it.
This is great for the author because you don’t have to put any time, money, effort, or expense into securing foreign rights for your title. You also earn a profit and don’t have to give a percentage to a literary agent.
The hosts recommend you work with a foreign rights agent so you don’t have to know everything that might be in a foreign rights contract with another publisher. You don’t want to accidentally sign away the rights to your book for 150 years instead of five years.
How do you land a foreign rights agent? Foreign rights agents will attend big events like book shows or conferences like The London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair, and Beijing International Book Fair, and you must have appointments to meet with them.
It’s similar to querying an agent for traditional publishing. Reach out to potential agents and send them a query letter. If they’re interested, they’ll ask for a copy of your book or a sample of your writing. If they choose to enter into a contract with you, they’ll use their connections and experience to find and negotiate a deal for you.
Remember, just because you’ve queried with and been accepted by an agent does not mean they will actually secure a deal for you.
Agents specialize in certain genres and types of content; make sure you approach the right agent based on their preferred criteria. Some agents specialize in European markets; others in Asian markets. Jericho Writers has a database of agents called AgentMatch, which I didn’t know about and have now listed in my FAQs about lit agents.
Finding the right agent is time consuming and takes a lot of research.
Enter DropCap
DropCap has created a foreign rights marketplace specifically for indie authors to use, and the hosts are really impressed by the platform. Without something like this, it’s a complicated process for authors to go after foreign rights sales.
DropCap developed the marketplace so that indie authors could have a place to license the rights to their content internationally without having to go through the other steps above. If you’re an indie creator, sign up for an account and list your work. It starts at US$197/year and goes up from there.
On the other side of the platform, they have 3,000 different rights buyers they’ve worked with for years who look for content that fits what they want to purchase or license the rights to.
DropCap handles all the transactions for you. If you want representation, they can represent you for whatever the standard agents percentage and fees are. If you tried to do this on your own as an author, you might not necessarily know how to pitch your book to foreign publishers or buyers, because you’re not clear on what information is relevant for those markets or for those buyers. DropCap sets you up for success with that.
You don’t pay a fee to have your book listed in somewhere with a thousand other books. You get your own dedicated author page. There’s a custom landing page that’s made for each book that you list. And then there’s a lot of system matching that happens.
If a group of licensees or rights buyers is looking for the specific type of fiction or nonfiction you offer, its built-in algorithm maps and syncs buyers with content creators. It also has educational courses about foreign rights.
What happens after you license the foreign rights to your book?
You’ll sign a contract and keep your copyright. You still retain the rights to your own IP. The contract will outline terms like how long the publisher has the rights to your title. Or they’ll license the rights but within specific countries, or only translate it into specific languages.
The contract should talk about what the go-to-market timeline is. In traditional publishing in the US, with film rights, someone might option the rights to a book and then just sit on them for a decade. You don’t want that to be the case. If somebody buys the rights to your books or licenses the rights to your books, you want them to say they promise to go to market with the book within 18 months.
Similar to traditional publishing, they’ll pay you a flat fee in advance for the rights to your book. There might be a royalties deal built into that; once you earn through your advance, your royalties will be a certain percentage after that. Your contract will specify whether you get paid annually, quarterly, monthly, every time you hit a certain threshold on sales, and so on.
It’s worth having an agent involved because the agent will negotiate these terms and translate them into something that a lay person will understand.
You may or may not be selling or licensing the rights to all versions, one version, and different formats. Pay attention to this and figure out what you care about the most. The more versions and formats you agree to licensing, the more money you may make from that.
But the flip side to that is you may feel very strongly about, let’s say, your book being translated into an audiobook for Russia. So you may want to think about that. If that’s something that concerns you, then you may want to make sure that’s not included. Paying attention to those things is really important.
Translation will be required, and your buyer will take care of that. There are cultural nuances that need to be accounted for; it’s not just a cut and dry overnight process, so you’re going to have to have some patience there. (See this article by Dave Chesson)
Then they’re also more than likely going to redesign or repackage your cover and probably touch on the formatting when they do the translation. There will be design changes to better accommodate that geographic location and their cultural nuances compared to the culture for which you wrote that book.
It’s everything from your title and your cover design, cover copy, back cover copy, interior front and back matter, and even your marketing copy and your main USPs. Many times, it’s going to look wildly different.
Need a book coach, ghostwriter, editor, or formatter to help you publish your book so you can get it in the hands of readers? Read more about my services here and contact me if you’re ready to begin!
