Ezine and Print Magazine Rights: Part II

by

Kathryn Page Camp

Last week I described three major types of ezine and print magazine rights. This week I’ll talk about some other common types.* This is not a complete list, and even the ones talked about in these two posts can be modified by contract, so make sure you read the submission guidelines and any formal contract you may be offered. More about that at the end of this post.

As a reminder from last week, when used in this post the words magazine, publication, and periodical include both print magazines and ezines. References to story, piece, or item include stories, articles, poems, and any other type of work that can be submitted to a magazine.

One-Time Rights

One-time rights allow the publication to publish your story once. If it wants to publish it again, it must get your permission.

Simultaneous Rights

If you grant simultaneous rights, you are probably trying to sell the story to more than one publication. As the name implies, simultaneous rights allow several periodicals to publish the piece at the same time. These rights are not the same as reprint rights since you may be selling the item for the first time.

Nonexclusive Rights

When a publication buys nonexclusive rights, you can sell the piece again at any time. Unlike one-time rights, however, nonexclusive rights authorize the magazine to reprint the piece in subsequent editions of its publication without further payment or permission.

You can explicitly agree to sell nonexclusive rights, but it is also the default. If you don’t say what you are selling and the publication doesn’t say what it is buying, it gets nonexclusive rights.

A Word of Warning

Rights can be modified by agreement, and even if the magazine doesn’t make you sign a contract, you still have one. In that case, the contract will usually combine the terms of your submission letter, the publisher’s acceptance letter, and the submission guidelines. If your submission letter offers one type of rights and the publisher doesn’t object, that is what you have sold. If the publisher says it will buy a different type of rights and you don’t object, then the acceptance letter governs. If both letters are silent but the submission guidelines tell you what the magazine buys, that is what you are selling. So read the submission guidelines carefully.

Because it’s important to know your rights.

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* The two posts in this series are taken, with modifications, from pages 166–170 of Writers in Wonderland: Keeping Your Words Legal by Kathryn Page Camp and are used by permission from me to me.

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Kathryn Page Camp is a licensed attorney and full-time writer who writes adult non-fiction as Kathryn Page Camp and middle-grade fiction as Kaye Page. Writers in Wonderland: Keeping Your Words Legal was a Kirkus’ Indie Books of the Month Selection for April 2014, and her first middle-grade historical novel, Desert Jewels, was released in August 2017. You can learn more about Kathryn at www.kathrynpagecamp.com.