Rights to a setting

It shouldn't (but check the contract clauses carefully). Reputable publishers buy the rights to publish those books specifically, but you always own the intellectual property unless you specifically sign that away.

It depends on the publisher but if it's a big pub you won't be able to self-publish in that same world because they'll own the rights to everything including setting. They will have control over your characters, settings and everything and you can't do anything with them until the duration of whenever their rights end. That could be years.

So, if books are in the same setting even with different characters, no, you will NOT be able to self-publish books in that setting. Also, pubs have first rights refusal meaning you gotta show them the next book and give them a chance to reject or accept even if you don't want to continue with the publisher.

If it's a small press, it depends because they tend to do things differently.

So in short, you could be sued if a pub has the rights to your characters or anything to do with your book and you self-publish anyway. Also, many big houses don't allow you to self-publish while publishing with them. This is even if you use a pen name and write something in a genre different from the books you've published with them. With some pubs, once you sign with them you aren't allowed to release competing works.

That's not necessarily so. It's going to depend on your contract, and what gets agreed to. I know of one colleague who self-pubbed some books that continued a trade-pubbed series, and I have that same option in my own big pub contract. But it was something that I made clear to my agent from the outset that it was very important to me that if I sold books 1 and 2, and they didn't want book 3, that I could go on and self-pub it. So that's in my contract.

efreysson said:

I'm currently trying to break into traditional publishing. If I do get the first story published by professionals, but they turn out to be uninterested in releasing more stories, will that cause legal difficulties for me in self-publishing stuff in that setting, possibly with cameos by familiar characters?

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This shouldn't be a problem. I know plenty of series that have started with large publishing houses and have ended up with future installments being published by a small press (or self-published). I think you're safe.

Have it stipulated in the contract. Mine has a limited non-compete on novel-length work, but the timeframe is fairly short. They have no rights over novellas or shorts, never mind things like comics or audio/film adaptations (as opposed to audio books). My understanding is this arrangement isn't uncommon, but of course I don't know for sure.

lizmonster said:

Have it stipulated in the contract. Mine has a limited non-compete on novel-length work, but the timeframe is fairly short. They have no rights over novellas or shorts, never mind things like comics or audio/film adaptations (as opposed to audio books). My understanding is this arrangement isn't uncommon, but of course I don't know for sure.

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^^ This exactly. Unless you are working with media tie-ins, this is a common way of handling it (big publishers included), and an agent is quite useful for making sure the contract covers these points.