Publishing has a vocabulary problem. Much of it sounds technical when it is really quite simple, and some of it sounds simple when it is concealing a decision worth a great deal of money. Authors sign agreements every week without being certain what they have agreed to — not through carelessness, but because nobody ever sat down and explained the words.
This is that explanation. It is arranged by the question each group of terms actually answers: who owns the book, what the book physically is, how it reaches readers, who gets paid, and what the different routes to publication really mean. Keep it open the next time somebody sends you a contract.
On this page
Your legal ownership of the work you created. It exists automatically the moment you write something down — you do not have to register it or apply for it, though registration can help in a dispute in some countries. Copyright is what gives you, and only you, the right to print, sell, translate, adapt or licence the book, and to earn from each of those things.
In most major markets it lasts for the author's lifetime plus seventy years, though the exact term varies by country.
This is the distinction that matters most, and the one most often blurred. To assign your copyright is to hand over ownership, permanently, unless the contract says otherwise. To licence it is to grant permission to do specific things, for a specific time, in a specific territory, while you remain the owner.
A publisher does not need to own your copyright in order to publish your book. It needs a licence broad enough to do the job. If an agreement asks for assignment, ask why, and be satisfied with the answer before you sign.
The clause that says when rights come back to you. Good contracts state plainly what triggers it: the book going out of print, sales falling below a threshold, a fixed term expiring, or simply your giving notice. Contracts without a reversion clause can tie a book up indefinitely. Always look for it. If you cannot find it, that is the finding.
Separate from copyright and, in many countries, not transferable at all. These are principally the right to be identified as the author of your work, and the right to object to treatment of it that would damage your reputation. Some contracts ask you to waive them. You are usually entitled to decline.
The International Standard Book Number: the unique identifier retailers, libraries and distributors use to refer to one specific edition of one specific book. Every format needs its own — paperback, hardback, epub and Kindle each carry a different ISBN.
The important part is not the number, it is whose name sits behind it. An ISBN is registered to a publisher of record, and that registration is what appears in the industry databases retailers consult. If a service issues you a number from its own block, that service is listed as your publisher, and moving the book elsewhere later means starting again with new numbers. Ask who the publisher of record will be.
The trading name a book is published under. A house may run several imprints for different kinds of books. It is a brand rather than a legal entity, and it is what readers see on the spine.
Everything about your book that is not the book: title, subtitle, author name, description, categories, keywords, price, publication date, page count, age range. It is dull, and it is decisive. Retail search results, recommendation engines and category rankings all run on metadata, so a book with careless metadata can be effectively invisible even when it is properly distributed. Much of the difference between a book that gets found and one that does not is made here.
The finished dimensions of the printed book, usually given in millimetres or inches — 203 × 127 mm is a common business-book size. It affects page count, printing cost, shelf presence and how the book feels in the hand.
Copies are printed individually as orders arrive, rather than in a single run held in a warehouse. That means no stock to finance, nothing unsold, and a book that can stay available indefinitely in many markets at once. The trade-off is a higher cost per copy than a large run, which matters more at high volumes than it does for most professional books.
The traditional method: a large quantity printed at once, at a lower cost per copy, and stored until sold. It makes sense when you know you will move the volume — a corporate order, a large event, a title with proven demand. It requires paying for the whole run up front, and having somewhere to keep it.
The commercial machinery that makes a book orderable: the feed of metadata into industry databases, the trade terms that let a shop actually buy it, and the printing and shipping that fulfils the order. Real distribution is what puts a title within reach of retailers and libraries worldwide.
Not the same thing, although the two words are used interchangeably in a great many sales pitches. A book can be listed on a retailer's website — available — without being meaningfully distributed. Listing is easy. Sitting in the databases that booksellers and librarians order from, on terms they will accept, is the harder and more valuable part.
When someone promises your book will be “available worldwide”, ask what that means in practice: listed, or genuinely orderable through the trade?
The percentage off the cover price taken by a retailer or wholesaler. Bookshops need a meaningful discount to stock a title at all; set it too low and the book is technically orderable but commercially unattractive. It comes directly out of what reaches you, so it is one of the levers that decides both reach and revenue.
Across much of the trade, physical bookshops can send unsold stock back for credit. Whether a title is offered as returnable affects how willing shops are to take a risk on it. It is one of the less visible terms with real consequences.
Where a given set of rights applies. “World English” means English-language rights everywhere; a territory-limited deal might cover only Singapore and Malaysia. Granting worldwide rights to someone who only sells into one market is a common and expensive mistake.
The right to publish the book in another language or another territory, usually licensed to a publisher in that market who translates and publishes it themselves. These are separate assets. If you own your copyright they remain yours to licence — and for books with a professional readership they can outlast the original edition's sales.
Your share of each sale. The critical question is what it is a percentage of. A royalty on the cover price and a royalty on net receipts — what the publisher actually banks after the retailer's discount — can be the same number and mean very different money. Always ask which basis is being used.
Money paid to the author before publication, against future royalties. It is an advance, not a bonus: you earn nothing further until it has been repaid out of your share. Advances are characteristic of traditional publishing and are usually absent elsewhere.
What remains after the printing cost and the retailer's discount. On a print-on-demand title the arithmetic is unforgiving — both come off the top, and the remainder is split according to your contract. Anyone unwilling to walk you through that calculation on your own book is worth a second look.
The publisher selects the book, pays all costs, usually pays an advance, and takes a licence — often exclusive and long — in return. You are not asked for money. Acceptance rates are low, the process is slow, and the publisher controls most decisions, including whether to keep the book in print.
You do everything and you own everything. You commission your own editing, design and proofreading, buy your own ISBNs, and handle distribution and marketing yourself. Complete control, complete responsibility, and a result that depends entirely on who you hire and how well you manage them.
The author contributes to the cost of production, and the publisher brings the craft, the standards and the distribution. Done properly it is a legitimate route, particularly for professionals whose book has work to do beyond bookshop sales. Done badly it is a vanity press with better manners. The label tells you nothing on its own; the specifics tell you everything:
A publisher confident in its answers will give them without hesitation.
A business whose customer is the author rather than the reader. It publishes anyone who pays, frequently takes or encumbers the copyright, issues its own ISBNs so the book cannot easily leave, and concentrates its effort on selling packages to authors instead of selling books to readers.
The tell is rarely the fee — plenty of reputable arrangements involve the author paying. The tell is what happens to your ownership, and whether anybody is genuinely trying to sell the book.
Whatever route you take, and whoever you are speaking to, most of what matters is covered by three questions:
Any publisher worth working with will answer all three plainly, and in writing, before you have signed anything. At Rishita Books, authors keep full copyright to their work — always. If you would like to talk through the other two on your own book, we are happy to do that, whether or not you end up publishing with us.
Nothing here is legal advice. Publishing contracts vary, and so does the law from one country to the next. If a great deal is riding on an agreement, have a lawyer read it.
See how the Rishita Books programme works — and what stays yours.