Today we’re going to go back and look at the publication rights we mentioned the other day. The publication rights you are given when you sell your work can have a huge impact on your ability to reuse your work later on in life.
If a publication gives you first serial rights you are getting the absolute best deal a writer can get. You are giving the publication the right to be the first publication to ever publish that particular article but you retain the rights to resell that work to other publications later on down the line. If you decide to build a blog later on you could include the article as content, or you could sell it to another publication. It’s up to you. It is possible to limit the meaning of first serial rights depending on your geographic location or the language the piece is to be published in as well.
One-time rights become important if and when you sell an article to a newspaper or local periodical. This means you give the publisher the rights to publish your piece one time but that they don’t care whether or not anyone else is publishing that article at the same time. The local newspaper in Orlando, Florida isn’t going to care if a local paper in San Francisco, California is publishing the same article during the same time frame. They publisher may turn around ask you not to resell the article to a paper within the same area of circulation. Therefore, you can’t sell the same article to the local Orlando paper as you would do the paper that serves the entire county.
When you market a piece that has been previously published you are attempting to sell second serial (reprint) rights. You can resell the article to as many publications as are willing to print it as long as you only gave one-time rights to the first publisher.
Selling an article with all rights means you can never sell it again. The publisher has to give you credit as the author every time it is published, but he can reprint it as many times as he likes in any form he wishes and never has to pay you anything more than the originally agreed upon price.
Work for hire is the worst situation a writer can find himself in. In short, you’ve been hired to write a specific piece, will be paid once for it, will not be given credit as the author, and may never republish the piece anywhere. You’re essentially selling the work itself as opposed to the aforementioned “right to publish” the work. The copyright for work done in this capacity will automatically transfer to the client or publisher upon delivery of the article, or upon payment, depending upon how your contract was negotiated.
You should, of course, make sure that the rights to your work are clearly outlined in the contract you sign with any publication. If you aren’t signing a formal contract you should put your agreements in the form of a letter and send it to the publisher outlining what you believe your understandings to be.
Make sure you contact a lawyer for help if you ever have any questions about your rights or contracts. He or she can help you muddle through the confusing world of legal documentation!
