Re: rights

**"Doreen Howard" g*@charter.net**

Dan,
I make a decent living writing and editing, so I feel qualified to comment.

Retain your rights!  Do not work for hire or grant all rights to a 
publisher.

Some years, I can make as much as 20 percent of my income from reprint 
rights from articles I wrote in the past.  Even when I was the garden editor 
at Woman's Day--a huge circulation magazine, I granted them only First North 
American Serial Rights--no electronic rights.  I've sold the articles I 
wrote for them over the eight-year-period I was editor many times over.

Also, when you retain rights to your material, you can use it in books, on 
your own website or sell it to other websites, radio and TV scripts and for 
newspaper columns.  I do all of the above.

I know there is a big push with newspapers to take all rights to any columns 
you write.  Don't do it.  Or if you do, tell the paper in advance, you are 
giving them recirculated material, because you cannot afford to give them 
anything original.  Sometimes you have to be difficult to deal with to get 
what you want.

Some magazine publishers, large conglomerates with multiple titles, insist 
on all rights.  I don't work for them.  There are plenty of other places to 
sell your work.  And, some publishers that insist on all rights will back 
down when you refuse.  There is the first contract which is in their favor 
and there are other contracts they can pull off their hard drives that are 
much more fair to the writer.
My humble opinion and experiences,
Doreen Howard 

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