Your Rights Are Your Most Valuable Publishing Asset
Rights are the foundation of every publishing deal and every self-publishing decision. Whether you are signing with a small press, partnering with a hybrid publisher, or simply choosing which platform to publish on, every agreement involves an exchange of rights. Giving away the wrong rights — or not understanding what you are agreeing to — can cost you revenue, control, and future flexibility for years.
Indie authors have a distinct advantage over traditionally published authors: you begin with all rights by default. No publisher holds them. That means the question is not how to get rights back — it is how to avoid giving them away unnecessarily in the first place.
This guide explains each type of publishing right, what it means in practice, what to look for in contracts, and what rights indie authors should almost never surrender without significant compensation.
Copyright Ownership: The Foundation of Everything
What Is Copyright Ownership and Why Does It Matter?
Copyright is the legal ownership of your creative work. As the author, you own copyright the moment you write the manuscript. All other rights — print, ebook, audio, translation, adaptation — flow from that copyright. You can license individual rights to other parties while retaining copyright itself, or you can transfer copyright entirely, which is rarely advisable.
Never sign an agreement that transfers copyright itself to a publisher, packager, ghostwriting service, or any other party unless you fully understand and have negotiated the terms. Transferring copyright means you no longer own your book. Licensing specific rights for a defined territory and time period is standard practice; surrendering copyright entirely is not.
Print Rights
What Are Print Rights and When Should You License Them?
Print rights cover the publication of your book in physical form — paperback and hardcover. As an indie author publishing through KDP Print or IngramSpark, you retain these rights by default. You are not granting them to Amazon or Ingram; you are paying them to distribute.
The key distinction is between using a service and granting a right. Publishing through a distribution platform is a service relationship. Signing with a publisher who takes print rights is a rights relationship — and the terms (territory, duration, exclusivity, royalty rates) must be carefully negotiated.
If a small press or hybrid publisher requests print rights, ensure the contract specifies the territory (e.g., English-language, US only), the duration (e.g., 5 years with reversion clause), and the royalty rate. An open-ended, worldwide print rights grant with no reversion clause is a significant loss of control.
Ebook Rights
What Do Ebook Rights Cover?
Ebook rights cover digital publication of your text in formats like EPUB, MOBI, and PDF. These are among the most contested rights in modern publishing because ebooks carry high margins and near-zero production costs for publishers.
For indie authors, the critical ebook rights decision involves platform exclusivity — specifically Amazon KDP Select. Enrolling in KDP Select grants Amazon 90-day exclusivity over your ebook. During that period, you cannot sell the ebook through Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, or distribute through library platforms. This is a legitimate strategic choice in some genres, but it is a rights restriction that should be entered deliberately, not by default.
If you work with any publisher or packager who requests ebook rights, ensure the agreement specifies platform scope, territory, duration, and royalty split. A 50% royalty on ebook net receipts is below what indie authors earn self-publishing; most major publishers offer 25% of net on ebooks, which is why many authors keep ebook rights and license only print.
Audiobook Rights
Why Are Audiobook Rights Increasingly Valuable?
Audiobook revenue has grown consistently for the past decade and now represents a significant share of publishing revenue for successful authors. These rights are worth protecting carefully.
ACX, Amazon's audiobook platform, offers an exclusivity option in exchange for higher royalty rates. ACX exclusive gives 40% royalties but restricts distribution to Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books only. Non-exclusive gives 25% but allows distribution through Findaway Voices, Author's Republic, Spotify, Scribd, and library platforms. Many authors find the wider reach of non-exclusive distribution more valuable than the higher per-unit rate of exclusivity.
Never grant open-ended audiobook rights to a third party without a clear reversion clause and royalty terms. Audio production costs are real, but the rights are yours to keep unless you choose otherwise.
Subsidiary Rights: What They Are and Why They Matter
What Are Subsidiary Rights?
Subsidiary rights are rights derived from your original work that allow others to create different versions of it. They include translation rights, adaptation rights (film, TV, stage), serialisation rights, and large print rights. Traditionally, publishers sought to bundle subsidiary rights into publishing contracts because they represented significant additional revenue.
For indie authors, subsidiary rights can be handled directly or through a literary agent specialising in rights deals. You do not need a traditional publisher to license translation or adaptation rights — these can be negotiated independently or through a dedicated rights agent.
Translation Rights
Translation rights allow another party to translate and publish your book in a different language. These are among the most valuable long-term rights an author holds — a single translated edition in German or Spanish can outsell the English original in certain genres.
Translation rights should only be licensed territory by territory and language by language. A global, all-language translation rights grant is rarely in the author's interest. Keep each language right as a separate asset to be licensed individually to publishers in those specific markets.
Film, TV, and Adaptation Rights
Adaptation rights cover the transformation of your book into other media — film, television series, stage productions, graphic novels, and games. These rights are entirely separate from publishing rights and should never be bundled with a standard book deal without specific negotiation and compensation.
If a publisher requests adaptation rights as part of a book deal, that is unusual and worth scrutinising carefully. Publishers are not adaptation houses; including adaptation rights in a book contract typically benefits the publisher, not the author. A Hollywood option on a self-published book is entirely possible and increasingly common — but only if you retain those rights to license independently.
AI Rights: The New Frontier
As of 2025, AI training and licensing rights are among the most contested and rapidly evolving in publishing. Contracts are now appearing that include clauses granting publishers the right to use your work to train AI models, license your writing style for AI generation, or produce AI-narrated or AI-translated versions of your content.
Read every contract clause that references artificial intelligence, machine learning, automated processes, or new technologies. These clauses often appear buried in boilerplate language about "future formats" or "emerging technologies." If you see language granting rights to use your work in AI systems, request it be struck from the contract or significantly limited in scope, territory, and duration.
What Contract Language Should You Watch For?
Problematic contract language often sounds reasonable on first reading. Watch for phrases like:
- "All rights in all formats now known or hereafter developed" — this is an attempt to capture future formats not yet invented
- "In perpetuity throughout the universe" — an indefinite global rights grant with no reversion mechanism
- "Including but not limited to artificial intelligence and machine learning" — an AI training rights clause
- "Author grants publisher the right to produce, distribute, and sell the Work in any and all formats" — an attempt to capture all format rights in one sweep
- No reversion clause — any contract without a reversion clause (which returns rights to the author if the book goes out of print or falls below a sales threshold) should be treated with caution
What Is a Rights Reversion Clause?
A reversion clause specifies the conditions under which licensed rights return to the author. In traditional publishing, this typically triggers when a book goes out of print or falls below a minimum annual sales threshold. In the digital age, publishers sometimes argue that ebooks mean a book is never truly "out of print" — making reversion clauses harder to trigger.
When licensing any rights, always negotiate a reversion clause. A sales-based trigger — for example, if the book earns less than £500 or $500 in royalties in any 12-month period — is cleaner and more practical than an out-of-print trigger in the ebook era.
Final Takeaway: Indie Authors Win by Keeping Control
The reason indie publishing has grown so dramatically is not just royalty rates — it is rights ownership. When you self-publish, you start with all rights and make deliberate choices about which to license, to whom, on what terms, and for how long. That is a position of enormous creative and commercial power.
The authors who build the most sustainable publishing careers are those who treat rights not as administrative details but as long-term strategic assets. Every rights decision you make today shapes your options for the next decade.
At Brooklyn Book Publishers, our team helps indie authors navigate publishing decisions with their rights fully intact — from distribution setup to professional publishing guidance that keeps you in control of your work.
