Selling Your Rights

Most creative writers are so eager to sell their work that they don't stop to consider what rights they are selling. "Rights" refers to how a publisher can use your work. "Rights" has nothing whatever to do with what you are paid or the copyright of your work.

· First North American Serial Rights, or FNASR, are the most common rights purchased. The purchasing magazine has the right to publish the author's work for X amount of dollars, while the author grants the magazine permission to publish his story (or article) one time in North America. If you are offering these rights to a magazine, you will want to place "Offering First North American Serial Rights" at the top of the document.
· One Time Serial Rights – If you are simultaneously offering your story or article to several publications, you will want to place "One Time Serial Rights" at the top of the page. This grants the first magazine that snaps up your work the right to publish your story or article one time.
· Second Serial Rights – If you have previously sold the story or article, you will be offering Second Serial Rights to the next magazine. They will be able to publish your work once.
· All Rights – Unless someone is hiring you to develop a work for them, such as developing a course for a school, shudder at the sight of these rights. It means you are signing away "all rights" to whoever bought your work. You may never sell the work again, publish it, copy it, download it, or transfer it. You have no rights whatsoever left.
· Work for Hire – This is another "right" that you should shiver at. Work for Hire can only exist in two ways: Either you have created a document as an independent contractor and you are selling the rights to it, or you are being paid as an employee and your work was created during your work time – which gives your boss all rights.
· Non-Exclusive Rights – This one is not desirable either. Although the "rights" refer back to you after one year and you can sell it again, the original buyer may continue to use the work and reproduce it in syndication without sharing the profits with you.
· Exclusive Rights – If you sign these rights, you have given away the farm. An example of this would be Associated Content and other like places that assume full rights when they buy your work. You will not be able to reproduce it or sell it again. It's gone. Ker-plunk! Down the toilet.
· One-time rights – You can sell one time rights simultaneously to as many people as you want. Columnists use this right to sell their articles to multiple markets.

As you can see, there is only the difference of a hair's breadth on some of these rights. Keep this article in your safe and don't sign anything without referring to it!

There are many more types of rights as well, but this covers the most prominent ones.

Novel Writing is NOT for Beginners

Novel writing isn't for beginners, so why is it that every beginner wants to write a book about how rough their life has been? There's no use in attacking me. I already have 100 beginners standing at my door and waiting to flog me to death. By the time you arrive, there will be little left for the imagination. But… it would be nice if you wrote my husband and extended your sympathies.

Novel writing is something that should be left for someone who has AT LEAST had some experience in short story writing. And when I say, "some experience," I mean some experience in being published.

And now for the brutal, searing facts of life: no one cares what has happened in your life. Not unless it can be of practical use to them. The day for caring about what happens to your neighbor is nearly at an end. Can you even call six neighbors by their first and last names? I rest my case.

But this is not an article for ranting and raving. There are solid reasons why beginners shouldn't try to write novels. These are only some of the things they won't know:

· what a hook is, or how to make one
· how to build paragraphs with proper structure
· what a theme is, or how to find it
· what a plot is, or how to build it
· how to build a character, or how to give it warts
· what an arc is, or how to use it
· what resolutions are, or how to do them
· or how to write a properly crafted 2,000 word short story

So where does that leave all of you beginners who are reading this? How can you learn these steps? The obvious answer is a writing course. Start at the beginning and work your way up. Two classes will be all you should need, unless you also need a review course in punctuation and mechanics.

But if you can't do that right now, read every article you can find on writing and take notes! Take The Writer Magazine, which is the best on the market (and I have no affiliations with them). Write to people with writing websites and ask them specific questions.

Another thing you can is to join one or more writing groups. The one I recommend is Writing.com. They have a five-star rating system where you can rate other people's writing and they can rate yours. And before you get into a writing group, make up your mind that you will accept and act upon 95% of the suggestions and criticisms that you receive, and that you will not wear your feelings on your sleeves.

So how do you know which 5% not to accept? At first, you won't. As time passes, you will be able to discern that.

In closing, when you can craft a good 2,000-word story (the equivalent of one chapter), take a novel writing class. A novel is too much work to "try out".