First Use Rights
Are you a writer who wants to make their words go further?
Would you like to make your words into permanent assets instead of throwaway penny earners?
If you’re serious, the answer is yes to both questions.
You might be in the same boat as I was a few months after I started freelance writing though. You didn’t have a clue about how rights to your work should work.
I was selling my work forever for a penny a word. Don’t do this.
This article will give you a quick overview.
Copyright Law
When you are a writer, it’s easy to assume you’re selling your words.
By default, you aren’t.
What you are actually doing is licensing your product (i.e. your words) for use by a third party. (Check your country laws for the details on this.)
If you write a book and send it to a publisher, then you are giving them a license to print that work for the contract’s duration.
Now, most writers don’t know about the law. Mostly, they write and let an agent handle it. Big mistake.
The average publishing contract will never earn out its advance. You might get an advance of 5k for your first novel. The publisher will then buy your rights for the life of the copyright.
That’s seventy years after your death.
However, you can apparently (I have no experience of this) get your rights back after 35 years.
Even so, 5k over 35 years is a sore deal. But most people will fall for this because they don’t think in terms of licensing property.
Remember, you own the rights to the words by default, legally. This is true whether you self-publish on Amazon or have a publisher (Or anything in between.) All that changes is the terms you agree to.
Freelance
Unsurprisingly, the same is true with freelance copywriting work.
However, you do need to check the terms and conditions of the freelance sites you’re on if you’re using places like UpWork or Elance.
Often, they’ll have a clause which says “The rights are assumed to go to the buyer unconditionally if not explicitly stated.”
If that’s the case, you need to explicitly state.
How To Do That
This doesn’t have to be tricky. If you have a listing, then write at the end of the listing, “This listing will provide you X service with full first usage rights for a period of one year. For different rights, contact me.”
Again, the term is negotiable if it ever comes to that. I mark up the work heavily for exclusive lifetime rights, and I’d only do that on certain projects.
If you’re writing to clients on a freelance site, then just add that sentence when you’re proposing them when you talk about what you’ll do and when.
If you’re directly contacting clients, it should be part of the contract you sign with them. You can talk them through it.
Maybe some negotiation is needed, but I can’t say I’ve ever had that problem. I have only ever encountered trouble with this once.
I mentioned about the rights. The person wanted something like 10,000 words a month in the form of articles for various sites. I told them about the rights. They wanted to have permanent, exclusive ownership. I said no. They agreed.
… Then they sent across a contract for me to sign that would guarantee them exclusive rights hidden in small print.
I didn’t sign, pointed it out, and never heard from them again.
That was a single client though. Most never even mention it.
To be honest, it’s not that much of an issue for clients. Some are asking you to promote a specific product in their niche that you’re never going to write an affiliate site about or anything.
But it means that you can store chunks of writing to adapt later.
It’s also proper business protocol because writing is about keeping track of your intellectual property, so it’s good to get in the habit.