World Rights for your Novel

Here's how it was explained to me.

If you give the house world rights, then you have to earn back any advance that the house negotiates before you see your percentage.

If your agency negotiates it so that you keep world rights, then you get 80% of all foreign sales automatically.

The advantage to giving a house world rights over your agency is that a big house will likely sell the rights to more markets. The disadvantage is that you may not earn out those advances.

I explained what my agent said to me in a another thread of yours.

Basically adding on to what Will said, if you sell world rights and a publisher in like Germany or something is forced to publish your book, they might simply just do that and not put any care into it. However if you sell the rights to a German publisher who has been bidding on it vs a bunch of other German publishers, well that means they REALLY want it and may give you a) more money, and b) more attention.

The flipside to some of these comments, though, is that if you sell world rights to, say, an American company, that goes on to sell sub-rights in various other markets around the world, the advances received from those other countries are applied against your American advance. Which can result in you earning out your American advance months ahead of the actual publication (which is a very nice feeling indeed).

willietheshakes said:

The flipside to some of these comments, though, is that if you sell world rights to, say, an American company, that goes on to sell sub-rights in various other markets around the world, the advances received from those other countries are applied against your American advance. Which can result in you earning out your American advance months ahead of the actual publication (which is a very nice feeling indeed).

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That is exactly what happened a good friend of mine with her first book, Willie. She had earned a profit for her three-book series long before the first one ever hit bookstore shelves! I sold the world rights to my publisher for some fairly long and complicated reasons; I haven't second-guessed that decision yet, but obviously only time will tell whether or not that was a good call.