The sale of rights is increasingly forming an important part of publishing agendas. In a globalised and smaller world, books and content from every part of the globe is becoming relevant and accessible. Generating a foreign rights revenue stream is a low-cost way of garnering readership from across the world.
A rights sale is basically the act of licensing the right to a foreign publisher or a different language publisher to reprint, translate, and distribute your book. But the process of going about foreign rights sales can be challenging. In this workshop, we focus on two specific types of the rights trade as it exists in India:
- Rights trade within India between various Indian languages:
- What are the opportunities and challenges?
- Why are there not enough translations happening between Indian languages?
- How do we encourage more in this field?
- Is it a self-sustaining model or do we need to set up financial assistance schemes and grants for translations?
- Rights trade between Indian and foreign publishers:
- What are the general terms and conditions of foreign rights sales?
- Does funding exist?
- What is the process of contacting foreign publishers?
- How do international book fairs work?
- How can we promote Indian writing overseas? Can the Central and State governments support this process?
In this workshop, Indian language publishers with extensive experience in Indian and international markets share their personal experiences and thoughts about the process of navigating the foreign and domestic rights trade industry for books.