Category Archives: subsidiary rights

April 06, 2010   DG&B   advice, Lauren, subsidiary rights  
7

Get organized

by Lauren

As the rights director, part of my job is trying to synthesize information on an author’s entire career to pitch front and backlist titles—and to know what is available to be sold or resold now. Foreign rights don’t have as short a shelf life as many others, and we still make foreign deals on books years down the line, sometimes after they’re out of print in the U.S.  Recently, I asked one of our clients to send me a copy of an old contract from before we represented him, and he quickly pulled it from his files and got it in my hands. He remarked that he had heard from other authors that they didn’t really keep accurate files, and he couldn’t understand how they functioned. The truth is, sometimes, they don’t do it very well.

So if I can offer you one piece of advice today, it’s this: get organized. Even if organization doesn’t come naturally to you. Even if you find it inherently loathsome. Do not assume that other people will keep records of things you’re getting copies of and don’t assume that you’ll still be in touch with them when you need those things later. Don’t assume that people who you’ve stopped doing business with will prioritize giving you information you want at the speed with which you need it. Keep every single contract, license, and royalty statement you receive. Any time you sign a legal document or are given a financial statement, be sure you can get your hands on it in the future and within a few hours of it being asked of you. Think about saving things digitally to make them easier to find and save space (though you should still keep hard copies with original signatures of any legal agreement as well). 

And start early. Plenty of well meaning authors tell me–as they sigh with dismay that they think they maybe did a deal with some country that begins with T for their 3rd or 4th book–that they’re going to organize their paperwork this time.  But 20 years in, that’s a much more difficult task than if you start organizing yourself from Day 1. And who wouldn’t want a career with that kind of longevity and potential?

January 07, 2010   DG&B   about us, fun, interns, Jane, Jim, Lauren, Michael, Miriam, optimism, Stacey, subsidiary rights, why we are agents  
11

Why I Am an Agent (Michael)

by Michael

I figure it’s my turn to explain why it is I do what I do, as Jane, Jim, Lauren, Chasya, and Rachel have—if only to satisfy the clients who keep asking when I’d do one of these!

It all started at the end of the last decade, December of 1999. It was my senior year, and I really needed a job. I had no idea what to do, and was thinking of finding something in retail, as I love a good discount. But my friend Jim McCarthy told me that the literary agency where he was interning was looking for another paid intern. Now, Jim had told me what he was doing, but frankly I never quite understood. These people were agents for authors? Why did authors need agents? And isn’t publishing for rich kids who want a hobby career? Though I didn’t think it was the job or industry for me, I figured it couldn’t hurt to go in and interview.

Like Jim, I was interviewed by Stacey Glick. If you talk to her, she’ll tell you that I had blue hair at the time. This is not true. I had bright, bleached-blond hair. The blue hair came later. (And the blue dye largely ran out of my hair when I had to make a delivery to one of our most important clients in the pouring rain that summer.) I believe she hired me on the spot, and I started working Friday of the same week.
I had no idea what I was doing in the beginning. I did what people requested, paid lots of attention, and started asking questions. Slowly, but surely, I came to be very interested and involved in what was going on at the agency. I’d loved books growing up, but I’d not been the same kind of reader in college. It was great to get back to reading things that were fresh, new and contemporary. And, as I looked around, I liked what I saw: a group of smart, creative, engaged, interesting people helping authors manage their careers. Just a few short months later, I was hooked—on publishing, agenting, and DGLM. When Jane and Miriam offered me a job in September of that year, I was honored, and I jumped at the chance.

When I started full-time, I was doing much of what I did as an intern, along with managing royalties and helping Jane with submissions. But quickly, I took on new responsibilities. I began assisting the rights director, learning the ins and outs of the foreign and domestic rights markets. When she left the agency a few years later, I took over the agency’s rights, eventually attending the London Book Fair with Jane and selling rights around the world. At the same time, I was building a list of my own, something Jane encouraged me to do within my first year at the agency. I started representing children’s books at Jane’s suggestion, something I was unsure of at the time(!). But quickly I found that I had a passion for middle grade and YA books, and my career as an agent really took off then. Several years ago now, I became a full agent, and the talented Lauren Abramo took over as our rights director, freeing me up to focus on my own projects.
Last year I was very excited to be promoted to vice president at the agency, and just as pleased this past December when I moved to Los Angeles to open a West Coast office for DGLM. I tell people all the time—I’d never have had these opportunities at any other agency or in any other job, and I’m forever grateful to Jane for that.

Our industry is going through big, drastic, challenging changes, and I’m glad that Jane, Miriam, the rest of the DGLM staff and I are working together to attack them head-on. My ten-year journey with the agency has been full of amazing experiences and opportunities, and I am just as enthusiastic about the ten years to come.

December 15, 2009   DG&B   Authors Guild, e-books, future of publishing, Jim, Miriam, opinion, publishers, subsidiary rights  
3

E-book rights wars are on!

by Miriam

Continuing the theme of Jim’s post yesterday, the e-book rights wars are on! Clearly Markus Dohle’s announcement that Random House has a retroactive claim on electronic rights that weren’t in existence when certain of their contracts were signed (as well as your grandma’s china and your first-born), has raised quite a stir in some circles–authors, agents, people who don’t like legal documents manipulated to mean whatever a powerful corporation decides they mean…

As PW reports, the Authors Guild is, rightly, miffed about this power play by one of the industry’s biggest players, not just because of the immediate implication to RH authors but because of the precedent such a move may set.

My sense is that Mr. Dohle’s move will not have legal legs to stand on and will engender a great deal of ill will within the publishing community. What do you all think?

December 14, 2009   DG&B   e-books, future of publishing, Jim, opinion, publishers, subsidiary rights  
7

Random House’s e-book rights grab

by Jim

The Wall Street Journal has an article on a letter that Random House CEO Markus Dohle sent out to agents on Friday. In the letter, Dohle casually mentioned his belief that Random House owns the digital rights to their entire backlist. Slow down, Smokey!

There’s a reason that almost all good publishing contracts include language that rights which are not specifically being acquired are reserved to the author. That language was placed there for the author’s protection specifically in the event of developments like electronic publishing technology—forms that couldn’t be foreseen at the time of the contract’s initial signing.

To say that electronic rights are suddenly included in the phrase “book form” is disingenuous. If that’s the case, why did later contracts go on to specifically list electronic publishing rights as negotiable terms in addition to the printed book rights? It’s also impossible to argue that ebooks were considered part of traditional book rights well before they were even a twinkle in Amazon’s eye.

We’re seeing a lot of publishers engaging in these sorts of rights grabs now and a lot of them are using semantics to pretend they’ve always had rights that were not, in fact, included in the purview of the original contract. And it isn’t just limited to ebooks. It makes sense that in times of economic troubles, publishers will be trying to hold onto absolutely every potential source of income that they can. But that doesn’t make it right or acceptable.

There’s a whole lot more conversation that’s a’comin’ on this one. Stay tuned.

December 04, 2009   DG&B   about us, Chasya, fun, Jane, Jim, Lauren, Michael, Miriam, subsidiary rights, why we are agents  
2

Why I Am an Agent (Lauren)

by Lauren

Since Jane, Chasya, and Rachel have already weighed in on why they are agents, I thought I’d take my turn.

I came to agenting as many people do in publishing, somewhat by accident. When I finished grad school I moved home: jobless, apartment-less, and broke. I’d worked in bookstores in college and grad school and at a non-profit between, so I was pretty confident that I’d be happy in either field. As with many of the uninitiated, the only real jobs in publishing I could think of were editorial, marketing, and publicity, and I didn’t think the latter two were for me. Neither the editorial job I wanted nor a position at a non-profit were especially easy to find. Out for dinner with friends one evening, having borrowed money from my mother to come into the city from the suburbs, I whined as usual that I wasn’t finding a job and was going a little stir crazy. My friend Beth, fortunately, threw me a lifeline: two of her college friends, Michael and Jim, worked at an agency, and she knew they sometimes hired freelance readers. It’d be a foot in the door, an excuse to come into the city, and a bit of money to make it happen. The next day she put me in touch with Michael, and I luckily applied for a reader position just as Jane’s assistant Leslie was moving off to Peru. Michael asked me if I was looking for a full-time position and wanted him to pass on my resume, and the rest is history!

So that’s how I got to DGLM, but 4 1/2 years later, why am I still here when my plan had been to work in editorial? Because it turned out to be a perfect fit. Not only did Jane encourage me to take on my first client as soon as she felt I was ready while still assisting her, but working for her that first year gave me invaluable experience in just how agenting works. Most of us at DGLM started in our first job in publishing as an intern or as Jane’s assistant, and it has made a tremendous difference. Jane knows the business inside and out having worked on both sides of the desk, and while the office is run on a complex set of systems (and anyone who has seen me work knows I love systems more than almost anything in the world), once you have a hang of them you have a real leg up on managing your time and serving your clients’ best interests. And even though Jane’s constantly busy, her door is literally always open–we don’t even have to knock.  Jane makes a point of explaining how things work and why.  Just before my anniversary with the company, I was offered the chance to move up–take on more clients and work junior to Michael in our rights department. I was able to continue learning, not just from Michael, who taught me the ins and outs of subrights and patiently gave me advice and answers probably more often than he had time to do. I also got to move desks to sit just below the loft Miriam works from, and just from hearing her do her thing I’ve learned a great deal in the last few years about how to put out fires, give editorial feedback, and make sure clients are on the right track and feel supported. When another year or so later the time came for Michael to give up rights selling to focus on his ever expanding client list, Jane and Miriam once again trusted me to climb another rung of the ladder.  Jim might’ve regretted being so easily accessible at the next desk when I couldn’t wrap my mind around a contract clause or royalty statement—or when my job, regrettably, called for me to use numbers. As an agent, my list overlaps slightly with just about every other agent’s, so there’s always someone to give me an informed second opinion, to suggest an editor who’d be perfect for my submission list, and to give me feedback on my pitches.

As the agency’s Subsidiary Rights Director and an agent, I still learn new things all the time, but I’ve also had the pleasure of being the one who sometimes knows the answers. It means a lot to me that others ask my advice now, even if it’s perhaps just rightful payback for the time spent at their desks with a confused look on my face. And I’ve gotten to see Chasya, who started as an intern back when I was Jane’s assistant and then took over the front desk from me, make a similar journey within the agency, even joining me in the back room at Jim’s old desk now that he’s got his own office.

So I’m an agent because I found myself in a supportive environment where I could grow, learn, and thrive, and where my obsession for detail and order would come in handy.  And yes, like everyone else really, I’m an agent because I love to read!

Newer posts »