who has the rights on your work?
Sat, 2003-12-06 09:47
#1
who has the rights on your work?
Can somebody explain to me, kindly ignoring my stupidity, an couple of things about being published. When someone decides to publish your work do they then own it? For example if I sell a story to a magazine can I sell it again to another one 2 years later? Or if it is published in a book of short stories can I then enter it into a competition with out telling the book publisher or do I have to ask their permission. Basically disregarding specific contracts how much ownership do I have of my own work?
Thanks in advance for helping.
david floyd
The short answer is you own all rights over your work until you decide to sell them or give them away.
Usually with book publication it will be made fairly explicity clear what rights you're selling to the publisher, although if it's anthology you may just be giving the publisher the right to publish your story once.
With magazines, unless they tell you otherwise you're selling/giving First British Serial Rights (or something like that) which means they have the first option to publish your work in the UK.
You can then also sell it in other countries and there's no reason why you shouldn't sell it to other magazines in Britain if they're happy with the fact it's already been published somewhere else.
That's very roughly speaking.
Sirren
thank you.