Publishing: how to license already published books for reissue? (copyright, money, stories)

[madison999]

Let's say you started a little publishing company to put out some original work. But you also wanted to issue an exclusive "collection" of a certain category of book.

Let's say true crime books from the 60's-90's, some that were highly successful, some obscure. You could add new covers, forwards, etc.

How does licensing work?

Are rights usually held by writers or publishers?

Are the holders typically eager to have their stuff reissued by boutique style publishers?

Does it work off a percentage or do they want money upfront?

Is this a bad idea?

[madison999]

Also, how do you find out if a book is considered "in print"?

[jghorton]

Are you thinking about 'public domain' books where the author has forfeited their rights or the copyright has expired ... or perhaps, the book was published prior to copyrights?

(From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public...c_domain_books -- "In most countries the term of protection of copyright lasts until January first, 70 years after the death of the latest living author. The longest copyright term is in Mexico, which has life plus 100 years for all deaths since July 1928.

A notable exception is the United States, where every book and tale published prior to 1924 is in the public domain; American copyrights last for 95 years for books written between 1924 and 1978.")

Since even the arbitrary use of copyright material is considered plagiarism, I suspect your proposed 'boutique re-publishing business' would become a snarled, legal quagmire - long before it became a feasible business.

[madison999]

That is not what I mean. I'm talking about how might contracts work and how do you find out if a work is even worth pursuing. I know what plagiarism is.

Im talking about making deals WITH publishers, writers, etc.

How you even arrived at that response is beyond me.

[banjomike]

Though I don't know how it's done, it is possible to license second-use work. That's what would be licensed. First use contracts sometimes pass the ownership of the writing to the publisher, but not always. Writers can and do own the copy rights, so the first use of the writing is only an exclusive use once in some cases. It's negotiable.

Second use is common, and if you were to compile, for example, a unique collection of short stories, I'm sure you could secure the rights to use them. It would probably be a good question to ask your lawyer about, as royalties would have to be paid on any story that's not in public domain.

[fishbrains]

Copyrights are typically owned by publishers, although authors occasionally own the rights as well. Typically the best method is to approach the publishing house.

Reprint rights are usually negotiable. They may ask for a flat fee, a percentage of sales, or some combination of the above.

You need to be particularly careful about reprinting anthologies or anything with artwork, photographs, charts, graphs, data tables, etc. Anthologies contain multiple works, which may all have different copyright holders. Artwork etc may also be under a separate copyright.

In print vs out of print is almost irrelevant for what you want to do. In print simply means the book is deemed commercially viable at the publisher, and they have copies on hand or are likely to print more when they need. Out of print simply means that they do not have copies on hand, and the number of orders they receive for the book, or general market interest, is deemed too low to bother printing more. You can call up their customer service number and simply ask about a particular title.

Get a lawyer.