How to Retain Ownership of Your Copyright…

…when Dealing with Publishers

(A Very Short Guide to Negotiation)

• The term “negotiation” may be a bit formal, and may bring to mind images of legally sophisticated advocates vying for advantage over one another by inserting arcane phrases into a complex document. Rest assured that such a scenario is not being referred to here. Nevertheless, in seeking to retain some or all of your copyright when submitting a manuscript for review and publication, you are entering a negotiation, and ASU Libraries offer this succinct guide to help you be successful in your dealings with publishers.

• First and foremost, understand that you are in control. You are not begging the publisher for a favor, a hand-out or a concession. Your manuscript is your intellectual property – you own it. The publisher is asking you to give up ownership of your intellectual property so that the publisher can turn around and sell that property to its subscribers. The publisher is gaining a major benefit in obtaining your work for free, so you are in an excellent position to ask to retain certain rights. In fact, all the publisher needs in order to publish your work is your permission. You do not need to transfer all your rights to the publisher.

• A Note on Individual Rights : “Copyright” is actually a group or “bundle” of rights. An author has complete discretion over these rights and can transfer all or part of them, or even just components of the rights themselves. A full discussion of copyright is available in F.A.Q. and will soon be available as a podcast on this website.

• A successful negotiation with a publisher can be a very easy process and most of the time it will follow the same pattern. More from the ASU Libraries web: http://www.asu.edu/lib/scholcomm/negotiation.htm