In this webinar for ASERL, Nicole Cabrera, Jordyn Ostroff, Mike Wolfe, and Brianna Schofield discuss their work in developing the recently published guide, "Understanding Rights Reversion."
The Authors Alliance has released "Understanding Rights Reversion: When, Why, & How to Regain Copyright and Make Your Book More Available," a guide that arms authors with the information and strategies they need to revive their books.
This guide is the product of extensive outreach to the publishing industry. In the process, researchers interviewed authors, publishers, and literary agents, ranging from a CEO of a major publishing house to contracts and rights managers of trade and academic presses, editorial assistants, novelists, and academic authors.
The authors were happily surprised by the consistency of publishers’ responses: across the board, publishers reported that they wanted to work together with their authors and that they are often willing to give authors their rights back if its in the books’ best interests. Publishers expressed a desire to “do the right thing” by books that would otherwise languish out of print.
Today’s technologies offer tremendous opportunities for authors to make their out-of-print or otherwise unavailable books more widely available. The guide is designed to empowers authors to advocate on their own behalf to make their works more widely available. See http://bit.ly/1z5tn8Q for the full guide in PDF format.