When I started managing the rights department at Ooligan Press about a year ago, I took on one of our first major projects: acquiring the rights to nine different French science fiction short stories for an anthology. It was an ambitious enterprise, but the previous managers did all of the legwork for setting it up. They found a French professor at our university who already had the idea for the anthology and agreed to translate (with the help of a few others); all that was left to do was find the owners of the rights to each story and acquire them for the anthology.
Me being the naive publishing hopeful that I was, I figured this would be a breeze. Despite having no prior knowledge or experience with subsidiary rights, I was confident that I could figure it out as I went along. We set our sights on having all of the stories acquired by the end of the summer. Little did I know, I was in for a year-long lesson on the realities of publishing.
The first task was to hunt down all of the rights holders for each story. Unfortunately, this process ended up being a bit more complicated than a quick internet search. We had nine stories in mind for the anthology, and most were originally published in obscure anthologies in France. Most were also on the older side—our oldest stories were originally published in the 1950s. Even after tracking down the French publisher, for most of the stories, the publisher actually no longer held the rights. This led me down a rabbit hole full of dead ends and confused French publishers, authors, and translators who had no idea who held the rights to these stories. I had to get creative to get in touch with the right people—at one point, I even started messaging people on LinkedIn out of desperation.
After finally managing to track down the correct rights holder for a story and getting in touch with someone who actually responds to their emails, I entered phase two: contract negotiations. Before starting this position, I had never seen a publishing contract in my life. I figured the publishers might cut me some slack after I pulled the “student-run press” card, but French publishers do not mess around. Soon, I found myself negotiating acquisitions costs, print runs, royalties, and more.
Luckily, one of the best parts about being a manager at Ooligan Press is the wealth of resources available to us at the university. I was able to collaborate with the Innovation and Intellectual Property department at PSU, who gave some fantastic insight into the legal side of things. I worked with professors who had contract experience to figure out which publishing contract pitfalls to avoid. Slowly, I was able to gain more confidence in my own knowledge and abilities.
After a year of countless emails, meetings, fundraising (foreign translation rights aren’t cheap!), negotiations, and a few mental breakdowns, our hard work paid off. We managed to acquire all nine stories, and get them translated. Although the process of acquiring the rights for these stories didn’t exactly go according to plan, it has been an invaluable learning experience for me and everyone else involved in this project. Now that we have successfully tackled a project of this scale, we can look forward to working more with foreign rights in the future here at Ooligan and taking on our next project.
Check out Continuum: French Science Fiction Short Stories, edited by Dr. Annabelle Dolidon and Tessa Sermet, out now from Ooligan Press!
By Jenny Davis