BFLA Open Week: Translation Rights – Beginnings

Written by James Pusey and Nicole Etherington

So, you’ve hooked an agent, and said agent has just submitted your debut novel to UK and US editors. At what stage does the translation rights department get involved, and in what capacity?

First off, it’s likely that the TR department will have been one of the early readers of your novel – we’re often asked to assess new manuscripts that an agent is about to send out in the UK, in order to offer an opinion about its potential for translation. We’d be looking for comparable titles that have seen success abroad and discussing amongst ourselves as to who we might target, and which markets seem likeliest. Each market has its own trends, periods of boom and bust, but there’s also a diversity of tastes within each one.

If we have a very strong feeling that the novel would be up a particular editor’s street, we might send it to them early, before a UK/US deal has been struck. The reality, however, is that the wheels of acquisition often turn slower than we’d like, and to give the novel the very best chances of success we’ll need some help.

By sharing your manuscript with trusted book scouts and our co-agents (our eyes and ears on the ground in capital cities around the world), we can ensure that the novel is considered by a range of the right editors. Co-operating with third parties in this way offers the novel greater visibility and gets people talking. Publishing remains a ‘people’ industry and fostering positive relationships with these contacts is priceless.

Timing is everything and it’s often the case that we won’t achieve proper lift-off in translation until the book has been sold in the UK. Given the vast amount of time, effort and expense that editing, translating and production entails, it’s important that overseas editors have access to copy-edited and proofread manuscripts, possibly cover art and design, and the boost that UK publication and its attendant publicity can give. This is not to say that it’s impossible to sell a title abroad that doesn’t already have a UK publisher, but it’s the exception that proves the rule.

The greatest joy, and biggest challenge, of our work in rights comes from successfully matching up a book with its perfect overseas editor. The first translation deal we make for a book is always a cause of excitemen, and can have a knock-on effect in other markets.

These are the beginnings, then, but, in fact, our engagement with the novel doesn’t end at this stage, or indeed at all. First publication, second (paperback) publication, reviews, prize listings, strong sales figures in the UK or elsewhere, all provide the opportunity for us to continue attempting to place the novel with suitable overseas partners, giving your novel a second, third, or hopefully twentieth life!

BFLA Open Week: What Do Rights Agents Do All Day (At Book Fairs)

Written by Nicole Etherington

If you are an aspiring author or a publishing hopeful, you might have heard those in the industry making reference to book fairs. A book fair is an international trade event where rights agents, scouts, and publishers from across the world come together to talk about books. There are several book fairs each year, held in cities across the world – London, Bologna, Turin and Frankfurt, to name a few – but the purpose is always the same: to showcase the authors and titles we represent to publishing individuals worldwide, and to build and sustain international relationships within the publishing industry.

            Although book fairs are typically held over a few days, they are the culmination of months of preparation. Ahead of the fair, we prepare our rights guide (a catalogue of our book fair titles and key information which we use when pitching to publishers), we hone our pitches, we meet with scouts to discuss upcoming titles and we put together our meeting schedules.

            During the fair, you will find me and fellow translation rights agents at tables in the International Rights Centre (IRC). Each literary agency is designated a series of tables in the IRC where they hold meetings for the duration of the fair. Meetings are often held in thirty-minute slots. During meetings with editors from international publishing houses, we try to get a sense of their taste, what genres and formats are performing well in their markets and why, and if there have been any unexpected successes. Then we tailor our pitches to the editor and what they’re looking for. I like to think of bookfair meetings as publishing speed-dating. After the fair, we follow up with editors and send them the materials they have requested.

            The pandemic made in-person fairs impossible in 2020 and 2021, and meetings migrated online. Although it has meant that Zoom and Teams etc. are now a more ready part of our toolkits, it is hard to recreate the buzz of a fair through a computer screen. Luckily, we were able to return to in-person events in 2022. Our preparation for the London Book Fair in April this year is well under way!

BFLA Open Week: Why Audio Rights Matter

Written by Roya Sarrafi-Gohar

The rise in the popularity of audiobooks is one of the biggest changes in the publishing industry in the past decade. While this means that audio rights to books are potentially worth a lot of money, many authors may not know that these rights can be sold separately to an audio publisher, rather than to the book’s print or eBook publisher. It isn’t always possible to hold back audio rights, and it is much more likely with some publishers than others.

If an agent can hold back audio rights when doing a book deal, then sell those rights separately to an audio publisher, this is most often likely to mean extra income for the author, as it usually comes with a separate advance, and a separate stream of royalty income once the advance earns out. Sometimes it is even helpful to have a separate offer for audio rights just to show an author the monetary value of those rights.

As with book design choices, control of the production of the audiobook, including choice of narrator, is ultimately with the publisher, but generally the publisher will at least consult with the author on their narrator choices. Choosing a narrator can be an exciting opportunity for an author to bring their work to life in a new way, and sometimes authors narrate themselves, if they pass an audition. Narrating a whole audiobook can be more taxing than it first appears!

Sometimes an agent will also try to hold back radio rights and try to sell these separately. This is usually a straight reading of an abridgement of the work on programmes such as BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime. A very small proportion of books get picked up for radio, but this is again a potential additional source of income. What’s more, it can often give the book sales a boost, as a lot more people become aware of the book, and if they listen to the whole abridgement, they might want to read the full unabridged version too.

This all goes to show that there can be a lot more to a book than just a print copy or eBook – there’s a variety of ways that a book can find audiences, and bring in more income for authors.

Sourcebooks triumphs in auction for THE RESORT by Sara Ochs

Kate Burke has sold US rights to Sara Ochs’ unputdownable debut thriller THE RESORT and a second unnamed novel to MJ Johnston at Sourcebooks for a significant six-figure sum. THE RESORT will be published in hardback this Autumn.

THE RESORT is set at a scuba diving school on one of Thailand’s world-famous party islands – a place where backpackers go to find themselves or get lost for ever. When a young woman is found dead during a scuba diving lesson, the morning after a full moon party, the diving instructor and her group of ex-pat friends realise they aren’t the only people who have fallen in love with paradise. A killer has too.

Rights have already been sold to this exciting debut in pre-empts or at auction in the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, Holland and Russia. The UK hardback edition will be published in July by Transworld as THE DIVE.

About Sara Ochs

Sara Ochs is an attorney, law professor, and author who splits her time between the United States and Sweden. When she’s not writing psychological thrillers set in far-flung destinations, Sara can usually be found on a flight with a glass of wine in one hand and a novel in the other.

Praise for THE DIVE

‘THE DIVE is an escapist, up-all-night thriller that holds you under and doesn’t let you surface for air until the very final page. Utterly compelling!’ – Lucy Clarke, Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling author of ONE OF THE GIRLS

‘A compelling and accomplished debut, perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley.’ – Steve Cavanagh, Sunday Times bestselling author of THIRTEEN

‘A deadly, dangerous, beautiful nightmare. THE DIVE will leave you breathless yet gasping for more.’ – Chris Whitaker

‘THE DIVE turns paradise into a nightmare… and I loved every minute of it… I was captivated by Sara’s writing and can’t wait to see what she does next.’ – Amy McCulloch, author of BREATHLESS

Follow Sara on Twitter and Instagram.

Visit Sara’s website.

BFLA OPEN WEEK: What’s Right for Rights?

Written by Roya Sarrafi-Rohar

Many people don’t know what a literary agency does, and most new authors are no different. Some might have been surprised to learn that their manuscript’s journey to publication is likely to start with a literary agent (or assistant!), rather than with an editor at a publishing house, and wonder why that is. In response, an agent can explain all the things they do to help books find their readers and help authors build careers. But we can also explain it in more hard-nosed terms: an agent’s job is ultimately to sell rights. While this might not be the most exciting topic for an aspiring author, it’s helpful to understand what we mean by rights and why they matter.

An author will (usually) own the copyright to their work. A book deal (generally) involves an author granting the publisher a licence to print, sell and promote their work in book form, although many other rights might be included too: the author will still technically “own” their work, but the publisher has the right to use it in the ways made clear in their contract, and with certain conditions.

When we grant rights to a publisher, they are always defined and limited: they will cover specific formats and languages, across specific territories (e.g. UK and Commonwealth, or US + Canada), for a certain period, and each of these rights will be exclusive or non-exclusive. Rights can be split up by and agent and sold to different publishers, and non-exclusive rights can be sold more than once. This means that an author and agent can find lots of new sources of income from one book, in different territories, languages or formats, and can decide which publisher would be best for the book in each case.

What all this looks like in practice will vary a lot from deal to deal, and there are a lot of factors the agent and author need to consider when deciding what rights to grant or hold back. But in a UK book deal, the exclusive rights are most likely to be limited to the English language, in the UK and Commonwealth territories, for full term of copyright, in print, eBook and often audio formats too, along with certain other rights.  

If you have a UK book deal that looks like that, it means that the author and their agent have held on to a lot of other rights that you can sell elsewhere. You can sell rights to publish in the US to a US-based publisher, where they are probably best placed to sell the book to local readers, or you can sell French translation rights to a publisher based in France. If you have a licence term of 5-8 years, as you often do in audio or translation deals, you can renew or sell the same rights all over again after that term has expired.

It is a huge task to keep track of all these available rights, all the deals made, the various editors and publishers in the picture, as well as the trends in markets across the world – it’s extremely challenging for an author to do alone, and this is what a literary agency specialises in.

There are also other rights your agent might license, which don’t strictly involve publishing the work as a book. There are straight reading rights, for example, for when the work is abridged and read on the radio (for example, as Radio 4 Book of the Week). The most significant of these additional rights is probably film and TV rights, although that world works very differently to book publishing. Some literary agencies, including Blake Friedmann, have an in-house media department which can handle book-to-film deals for our authors.

All of this might make it clear why an author should care about what happens with the rights to their work – it can mean that they earn more money, that their book available to more people, and they have more control over what happens with their book/s.  

If an author has the option of a book deal directly with a publisher, and they are wondering whether it’s worth getting an agent, one thing they should consider is what will happen with all these rights if looked after by the publisher. Often, when an author deals directly with a publisher, many more rights will be granted to the publisher, as an unagented author can’t do much with them anyway. The publisher’s rights department might then sell the rights they aren’t exploiting themselves on to other publishers, such as audio or translation publishers. They will take a cut of the income from these sublicences and pass the rest on to the author.

In theory, you could get very good financial terms in a deal like this, if your work is with a publisher with an active rights department, meaning you are no worse off with a publisher handling these rights than a literary agency – but this is often not the case in practice. An agent is vested in finding as many revenue streams as possible for their author, and building them long-term publishing relationships around the world. A publisher may not have the same resources or financial incentive to sell rights. So if an author thinks their book can lead to lots of separate deals in different formats and territories, they are likely to be better off with an agent.

Of course, this is only one aspect of what an agent offers an author, and the decision whether to find an agent, and which, should be considered alongside the value of industry expertise, vision for the book/s and editorial input, not to mention the personal relationship between author and agent. We could be considered a little biased on this issue, but we have an incredible Rights team who are keen to see our books translated around the world and possibly even watched on screen!