How to Write Short Stories: Rights and contracts

Short fiction has some of the best contracts in publishing. You license a short story for a limited amount of time and then the rights revert, and you can license it again, and use it in multiple ways for your own purposes, too. But importantly, you need to know what you’re signing.

Understand your rights

When you put an idea into a fixed form, like a short story, you own the copyright and then you can license it in different ways at different times.

First rights are the right to be the first to publish your story. It’s what professional magazines usually license, and some competitions and awards will claim. You can only sell first rights once since a story is only new one time.

First rights usually come with a limited period of exclusivity, generally around six months but sometimes as long as one to two years. After that, the rights revert to you, and then the story is yours to license again with reprint rights, or second serial rights, which are often non-exclusive, so you could have a story in several magazines and also self-publish it yourself.

These rights are also further subdivided into language and territory; for example, world rights in English is common, especially in a digital world where people can read and listen globally. Rights might also be assigned by format; for example, ebook and audio rights are common with short stories, and print might be added for an anthology.

Any rights that are not licensed are retained by the author. This means that if you license first rights to a short story for world English in ebook only, you could still self-publish the audiobook yourself, or license that separately.

There are also other potential rights like translation or subsidiary rights like adaptation for film or TV, and the contract should also specify a time frame for publication and when the rights revert.

Your work is valuable, so spend some time researching how licensing copyright works and make sure to avoid the worst contract terms. For example, never license a work for ‘all rights for the term of copyright’ since that may be fifty to seventy years after the death of the author, depending on jurisdiction.

A note on self-publishing

Self-publishing counts as first publication so if you put a story out yourself — on your blog, your Patreon, your own store, or as an ebook on Amazon or other sites — it has been published and you have used up your first rights.

You can still submit to traditional markets for reprints, but make sure you understand the order of submission and publication before you click Publish.

Questions:

• What are the different ways that you can license a short story?
• What suits you in terms of how you want to publish?
• Have you thoroughly read and considered the rights involved in any contract you have been offered?

Resources:

• Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction (2nd ed.) — Douglas Smith
• Closing the Deal… on Your Terms: Agents, Contracts, and Other Considerations — Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• The Copyright Handbook: What Every Writer Needs to Know — Stephen Fishman