Foreign publishing rights

[Serack]

I have limited understanding on how this kind of stuff works, but I understand that authors can sell the publishing rights of their works in such a way that a seperate contract is necessary for foreign publishers. 

I assume this is related to how text book publishers will have a version of a text book published in say India and sold for cheaper than an American publication of the book is sold for, and bar the sale of the India version here in the states.  (I have seen these cheaper foreign text books in the hands of American students though).

Ok having said all that, this article is about how a foreign student was selling these foreign publications of text books in America and was sued for it by the American publisher.  The Supreme Court found for the student.

So what would this mean when it comes to authors selling seperate publication rights to the UK and stuff like that?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Some publishers do try to offer contract for all rights worldwide these days.  Gollancz made a big thing of offering a flat million sterling for global rights for the next ten Alastair Reynolds books, for example.

This generally looks like a bad idea from the author's POV, as from the moderately successful mid-list genre authors I know well enough to be able to tell, foreign sales consistently bring in somewhere between as much and twice as much overall per annum as initial sales.

Policing what gets sold in which domains, in this day and age, looks like being pretty much impossible to do with any absolute force.

[trboturtle]

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=934

Worth checking out, I think....

Craig