Audio & Sub-rights Primer (Patreon)

Last week I announced the audio deal for ANNIHILATION ARIA, with rights going to Dreamscape Media. 

Here’s something cool – I got paid more for the audio deal than I did for the print and ebook rights. My advance from Parvus was small, because Parvus is a small, relatively new press.

But the audio advance was as much as I’ve been paid for the print/ebook rights of other books by much bigger houses. 

When I asked some colleagues for suggestions of topics to cover for Patreon, “audio” was the winning suggestion (winning in that I chose to write it). But I’m going to expand beyond audio to a short primer on sub-rights.

Starting with Basics

For the most part, when you sell an English-language novel to a traditional publisher, you’re selling at a minimum, First North American English rights. That means you’re selling the license to publish the work for the first time of anyone, in North America, in English. And only that intersection – all three of those in one. You’re not selling the license to publish In English anywhere else, or the right to reprint the book (if you were re-selling a novel that had reverted to you, you wouldn’t be selling First rights anymore).

Sometimes you’ll sell World English instead, which licenses the right to publish the book in English everywhere on Earth. A lot of the time, a publisher won’t necessarily have the ability to publish in English in print and ebook in *every single territory*. Ebook is much easier than print, but sometimes even ebook isn’t set up in every territory. It *should be* but sometimes there are problems.

“I Want it All”

In my experience, most publishers will ask to buy as many rights as they can for as little money as they can. They’re a business, they want to make money, etc.

In my experience, a publisher isn’t necessarily doing the best by you by taking all of the rights available. It’s rare that a single publisher is the best partner for print and ebook and audio in English and every other language books get published in. And if they are, they should pay for *all of those rights*. Like, a lot.

A Big Five publisher with affiliates worldwide is going to be in a better place to publish your book in other territories and a variety of languages than a small press without distribution in other continents. But that probably still doesn’t mean you should give them film/tv rights, theme park rights, or even audio.

This is where agents or a good IP lawyer come into play – negotiating on your behalf and finding out which rights the publisher is really in a position to exploit in a way that benefits both author and publisher.

If you’re selling a book to a Big Five house, they’re much more likely to insist on World English and/or audio rights. The first because they want to be able to sell the book consistently across all of their divisions (PRH UK, PRH India, etc.). 

For me, sub-rights mostly refers to audio, film/tv, comic/graphic novel, and more rarely-used sub-rights like theme park or enhanced ebook.

If you sell print, ebook, audiobook, AND film/tv all to the main publisher, that publisher has more ways of producing/selling the book, which theoretically means they’re more likely to sell enough that your advance earns out and faster. It may also mean that the publisher is more bought in on your book overall and are more likely to support it with marketing/publicity push – because they think it’ll be worth it since they can sell the book in several different ways.

But that’s putting all or almost all of your eggs in one basket.

Some additional detail for those curious: when you sell sub-rights to the main publisher, you’re going to get a royalty % for each of those additional formats. If the publisher turns around and sells audio to someone else, they tend to get a % of the advance and the royalties that the sub-rights publisher pays.

Here’s an example:

Publisher A buys your book for $5k USD and you sell them audio rights as part of the deal. They turn around and sell audio rights to publisher B for $3k for audio rights on say a 70/30 split. 

Publisher A gets 30% of that $3k just for themselves. The 70% of that audio advance from publisher B is applied toward earning out your advance from publisher A. This means your advance will earn out faster because the sub-rights advance recoups some of those costs even before publication. But only 70/30. The publisher will always make more $ if you get the same-size advance from publisher B as its own deal. So it’s a trade-off.

Why is Audio a Big Deal Now?

Because audio has experienced explosive growth over the last decade (since the spread of digital audio as a dominant form), especially the last few years. Amazon’s Audible and Apple’s music/audio store have helped facilitate and drive this growth, as has the podcast explosion, since it got more people used to reading fiction and non-fiction via audio.

It’s that kind of growth that lets my agent negotiate an advance just for audio larger than the advance I received for print and ebook on other deals a few years ago.

The Post-Thrones Era of TV and Film

Film/tv is also a big deal right now, even bigger than before </2019 meme> because of how many production companies are snapping up the rights to SFF novels and short fiction. There’s more demand, and publishers absolutely want in on that action rather than just getting the ancillary benefit by being the print/ebook publisher.

I’ve seen some new publishers pushing *really hard* on getting audio, comics, and/or film/tv when they make an offer because they’re trying to build transmedia into their core strategy. I’m thinking especially of places like Skybound Books, which already has strong comic and film/tv connections, but I’ve heard of others. The stronger built-in ties a publisher has to Hollywood, the more likely they are going to be insisting on buying film/tv rights. And most houses with internal audio production are going to try very hard to get audio rights. From what I’m hearing, some of those houses are going to demand certain sub-rights or walk away from a deal entirely

Before I wrap up, some more pointed thoughts on when and where to give publishers sub-rights. Here are some questions to ask:

Can they do a good job of exploiting these rights internally or are they going to turn around and sell those rights, taking a cut along the way? 

If your main publisher (print and ebook) has an in-house audio division that can be counted on to produce a quality audiobook edition and distribute it to major markets, it’s going to make a lot more sense to go ahead and sell them audio. If the publisher’s audiobook strategy is “sell audio as a sub-right to Audible/Tantor/Dreamscape/etc.), that’s different.

Does the advance reflect the fact that they’re getting more rights?

You might also choose to sell audio to your main publisher if you want more ways to earn out your advance rather than trying to get multiple advances. If you could probably get $3k in a separate deal for audio, does the main publisher offer $3k more for getting audio as well as print/ebook? If not, why, and how are they going to make up for that fact? Make them put forward an argument and get any guarantees or pitches about that into the contract if at all possible.

Are you in a position to exploit those rights?

If you’re working with an IP lawyer rather than a literary agent, you’d need to submit to audio publishers yourself (not easy) and/or find an agent for just those sub-rights. This isn’t easy. Another reason why I tend to recommend literary agents over just getting IP lawyers to review your contracts.

Do you need more money up-front or can you wait and take a risk on getting a better long-term payday?

Sometimes you just need the bigger advance, especially if you’re full-time as an author and relying on writing money to pay the bills sooner rather than later.

If you don’t need the biggest possible single advance ASAP, there can be advantages to holding on to sub-rights and trying to get a better deal later by selling them yourself. But if the main publisher offers a bigger advance if you give them audio and you turn that down (taking a smaller advance for just print/ebook), you are betting on that later better deal being worth it. 

Playing Hardball

The toughest part here is that publishers can always just say “Sorry, we get these rights or the deal is off.” And in a lot of cases, that policy is set not by the editor you’re negotiating with, but their boss or their bosses’ bosses’ boss (a corporate-level mandate). This is more likely with a Big Five house. They’ve got the scale and tend to be less flexible in their policies.

Now, you do have options. You never *have* to take a deal offered to you. It may just hurt a lot to turn it down after you’ve gotten excited about the prospect of a sale. But we have more ability than ever to turn down bad offers and find another way – from ebook self-publishing to print-on-demand to self-published audio at places like ACX and Findaway Voices. Audio is more expensive to produce than print or ebook (unless you’re buying an entire large print run up-front), but as I said above, the category is hot and growing.

My big takeaway, as with many of these essays, is be informed and be intentional. And good luck!