Written by Jiang Hanzhong
Publishing houses do copyright sales traditionally based on paper books, and occasionally engage in film and television adaptations of some books and other forms of licensing. Now that digital publishing is on the rise, the licensing of e-books is on the agenda, not only in China, but also in other countries, especially in Europe and the United States. Publishers selling e-book rights overseas usually through the following channels:
First, the publishing house directly provides authorization to foreign technical service providers, which publish it on the relevant carrier according to the authorization conditions. This is the most common approach. There is an English-Chinese pinyin dictionary that was licensed to an American home appliance company for network download many years ago. Later, through negotiation, the two parties signed a contract to use the book in more carriers, including the Android mobile phone software module. This book has been licensed for many years and the economic benefits are considerable. There are also many electronic companies that operate e-books in China, and I often receive such information, and I have some author friends who often receive such inquiries.
Second, the copyright is sold to overseas publishers through a book copyright agency. This is no different from a paper book authorization. However, the licensing of e-book copyright is often carried out separately from the licensing of paper books. This is because the market needs to be warmed up and also needs to be cultivated. When the relevant market is mature and there is a reader's need, the e-book is possible to authorize. There is a book called Dialogue: The China Model. First authorize the paper book copyright to the Korean publishing house, after the Korean version of the paper book is published, the market welcomes and needs the e-book, and the Korean agency company that represents the copyright of the paper book contacts the publishing house to purchase the e-book copyright of the book.
Third, there are now a number of e-book agency companies, the United States, China, and whether other countries and regions have it is unknown. How strong these companies are is is to be seen, because I have very little cooperation with them. They contact publishers, put books they see fit in their selected bibliography, and then enter into a bulk copyright purchase agreement with the publisher, such as forty or fifty books to buy together. Entering into such an agreement can sell the copyright of many e-books at once, and the numbers look beautiful. Whether it is domestic or foreign, the e-book market is still in the "enclosure" stage, and the risk of granting the copyright of the work to electronic companies at home and abroad at this stage is not small, because at this moment, there are fewer mature companies and fewer experienced brands. It is necessary to carefully examine before authorization, so as not to hit the chicken and egg.
The issue of remuneration is more complex. Let's start with the domestic situation. Authorizing domestic electronic companies to publish and sell e-books is not much. Last year I saw a report that the price of domestic e-books is equivalent to twenty-five percent of paper books, if a paper book is twenty yuan, if it is a publishing house and an e-book production and sales company four or six shares, if it is a publishing house and the copyright owner is a five-five share, how much income the copyright owner can get at a glance. I have heard that many authors in China have deep doubts about authorizing electronic companies to publish and sell e-books. The publishing and sales of e-books in the United States and other countries seem to be better, and the ratio of e-books to paper books is higher than that of our country, and some even reach 75%. If you want to increase the rate of revenue, then please make your own e-book and then hand it over to domestic and foreign distributors for distribution. This is equivalent to the export of books, except that the paper medium is replaced by a digital medium.
The authorization of overseas publishing of e-books requires corresponding changes in the coordination mechanism within the publishing house. If it is only to authorize others to use the right to use the e-book, the copyright department can operate, because the translation and production are borne by the foreign party; if it is authorized to use the Chinese rights overseas, if the overseas rights buyer needs the original storage file or other technical services, the copyright department needs to coordinate with the relevant editing and digital publishing departments. Except for the part paid to the copyright owner, the rest of the proceeds are all owned by the publishing house. As for how to distribute the income of this part of the publishing house, different publishing houses have different rules. As far as I know, most of them belong to publishing houses, and if the results are outstanding, the relevant personnel are rewarded.
People often ask how to monitor sales and revenue after e-book licensing to overseas publishers, which is very difficult to answer. This problem existed in the past when authorizing paper books to overseas publishing houses, so there were often clauses in licensing contracts that allowed verification. In the electronic age, this problem seems to be solved, and relevant information can be managed through procedures. The problem is that any machine is operated by humans and can be changed. As long as both parties to the transaction abide by the rules of the game, there is no need for monitoring; the two parties to the transaction have no integrity and do not trust each other, even if they have the most complex monitoring procedures in the world, it will not help. The fundamental premise of trading is mutual trust. A third-party monitoring mechanism has been asked, which does not seem to be operational.
In addition to the different subject matter of the authorization, the contract is also very different from the overseas authorization of the e-book. There are many things to learn, especially new technologies, new concepts, and new terminology related to electronic information dissemination. Last year I came across two U.S. companies, one looking to buy book rights and the other wanting to wholesale e-books to Libraries in the U.S. and the U.K. Since the contract they offered was in English and involved many specific concepts and terms disseminated by information networks, I couldn't understand it for a while, much less how to grasp it. I asked the other party to translate the draft contract into Chinese, one said that there was no such person, the other did translate it, and the meaning was understood, but it was still not sure. Of course, domestic publishing houses have also cooperated with these two companies and directly concluded contracts for the English version. Maybe these publishers have this kind of person who is familiar with Sino-US law, the Sino-US publishing industry, the Sino-US information network technology concepts and terminology, and has this certainty, and I honestly do not have this level, and these two businesses have not been done - because I definitely do not sign contracts that I cannot understand and do not grasp. Therefore, having knowledge of English, publishing, copyright, information technology and law is an important condition for the sale of e-book copyright.
In addition, there are two issues that require special attention. One is that the authorized use of e-books needs to be strictly defined as a carrier, means or occasion, and only one "right of information network dissemination" is not allowed. In fact, the copyright of the e-book we buy foreign books is also subject to this restriction, and the rights are clearly defined, the contract is easy to operate, and it is also convenient to understand whether the income is normal. The other is the archival management of the original book, especially the management of electronic documents. An american electrical company was interested in learning a dictionary for a Chinese, but unfortunately the authorizer could not find the electronic file. It just so happened that a Singapore publishing company was interested in the Singapore paper version of the book, and the book was re-entered, and the entry of more than seventeen hundred pages of dictionaries was not only time-consuming and laborious, but also found several people and did it for a long time just to edit. Managing book-related archives such as e-book manuscripts is not only conducive to copyright output, but also greatly beneficial to the promotion of books. I found that some publishers asked me to promote the copyright of paper books and e-books, but the information was incomplete, and I asked for it many times, and it was still the same. The other person told me that they knew this, and more information was not understood. I guess I got it all when I came up with the book, but I didn't sort it out later, and there was no archiving management. File management is an important prerequisite for copyright output.
(Originally published in China Publishing Media Business Daily, June 20, 2014)