The rights you're sitting on

Your book is not one product. It is a bundle of separate rights, and each right can be licensed on its own. Most authors license one or two of those rights and never touch the rest. The untouched rights are inventory: an audiobook right with no audiobook, a translation right no foreign publisher has seen, a large print right nobody has printed. This article is about seeing that inventory clearly.

What do you actually own when you write a book?

Copyright hands the author the whole bundle automatically, the moment the work exists. The bundle splits into named rights: print, ebook, audio, translation, large print, book club, serial (extracts in magazines or newspapers), film and television, merchandising. Each one can be granted separately — to different people, in different places, for different lengths of time.

A publishing contract grants some of those rights. A typical one says something like: you may publish this book in English, in print and ebook, in North America, for a set term. Read that sentence again as a list of limits. English only. Print and ebook only. North America only. For a term. Everything outside those limits stays with you.

This is why the bundle matters. Signing a publishing deal feels like selling "the book". It almost never is. It is licensing specific rights, and the contract lists them.

Which rights usually sit unsold?

The rights most often left idle are audio, translation, large print, book club, and serial.

• Audio. If your book has no audiobook, the audio right is sitting whole. It can be licensed to an audio publisher, or exercised yourself through an audiobook platform.
• Translation. Every language is a separate right. A book published only in English still holds its German, Spanish, Korean and every other language right.
• Large print. Libraries buy large print steadily, and specialist large print publishers license these rights for modest but real money.
• Book club and special editions. A separate edition for a subscription club or a boxed set is its own grant.
• Serial. Magazines and newspapers pay to run extracts — before publication (first serial) or after (second serial).

None of these sells itself. But none of them can be sold at all if you do not know you still hold them.

What does "still available" actually mean?

A right is available if no contract has granted it exclusively, in that place, for a term that is still running. Three questions decide it:

• Was it granted at all? Check each contract for the named rights. A grant can also be non-exclusive, which leaves you free to grant the same right to someone else.
• Where? Rights are granted territory by territory. A book granted exclusively in North America may be free to license everywhere else.
• Until when? Grants end. A contract term runs out, or a reversion clause (the part of a contract that returns rights to the author, often when the book stops selling) ends the grant. A right that reverted last year is inventory again.

How do you take stock?

Gather the contracts, and for each book list what each contract granted: which rights, to whom, where, until when. Everything not on that list is yours. While you read, watch for three things:

• Broad grants. A contract that says "all rights" or "world rights, all languages" leaves little behind. Knowing that is still useful — it tells you where the inventory is not.
• Subsidiary rights your publisher holds but has not used. Many contracts hand the publisher extra rights — translation, audio, large print — on the promise they will sell them on. If years have passed and nothing has been sold, ask about it. Some contracts let unused rights revert on request.
• Dates. A grant that expired is not a grant. Old contracts repay a re-read.

Things to consider

Selling a right takes a buyer. Finding one is real work. Taking stock has one real benefit: when an audio publisher or a foreign agent asks, you can answer in a day, not a week of digging through folders.

Know your position before you sign anything new. Know which rights are on the table, and which are already gone. That's an author's clearest negotiating line.

How Pubblish handles this

Pubblish records each contract: who it's with, which books it covers, which rights it grants, where, and until when. From those records it builds a Rights page for every book: each right shown as held, granted out — to whom, where, until when — or still available. You don't maintain anything extra. The page reads the contracts you have recorded. See the help guides for details.