The paperback rights were sold for a similar sum and, later, a major Hollywood studio bought film rights and assigned Hogan to write the screenplay. Translation rights in French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese were sold to publishers in those countries. These are just a few examples of how subsidiary rights were used for this fortunate young writer.
Interview
Kristin Kliemann has a B.A. in English and sociology from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Upon graduation in 1979, she attended the Summer Publishing Institute at Rice University in Houston. Within weeks, she left for New York City to seek a job in publishing. Her first position was as an assistant in the subsidiary rights department at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. After eighteen months there, she left to become associate director of rights at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Two years later she left Farrar, Straus for what turned out to be only one year at Holt, Rinehart and Winston as rights manager. She then returned to Farrar, Straus as director of subsidiary rights and eventually vice president. In 1991, Kliemann left Farrar, Straus again for her current job as subsidiary rights director of Hyperion/Disney Press, which is a book publishing operation owned by the Walt Disney Company. Kliemann teaches at various summer publishing programs and in the continuing education division of New York University. She lives in Hastings-on-Hudson with her husband and son.
If you had your education to do over again, how would you change it considering your present career?
I have a B.A. in English and sociology, which, perhaps contrary to what is expected, has served me well in my career. The English (both literature and practical writing skills) has helped in that I am at least somewhat aware of the world's "great books" (which helps in evaluating just where a given new title fits into the spectrum). And I learned how to write a sentence/essay/thesis, which, I'll admit, over the years has been boiled down to knowing how to write a decent pitch letter.
Now that's not to say that I couldn't use a bit more education. If I had the time, I'd definitely invest in an M.BA The publishing business is rather peculiar as businesses go: fully returnable goods, relatively low margins, no tradition of market research, very little product identity in the marketplace, etc. I have the impression that a broader knowledge of general business practices and marketing possibilities would be very useful.
At Hyperion, what is your most profitable source of subsidiary rights?
Subsidiary rights income is shared between the publishing house and the author, and the splits on the shares are determined by the contract between the author and the publishing house. Generally book club rights are split on a fifty-fifty basis (many other subsidiary rights are split significantly in the favor of the author), so licensing book club rights is one of the areas that is most profitable for us.
Focus on a specific book you published in the last few years and go through all the subsidiary rights sales generated by this article.
A few years ago, we published a book called Outsmarting the Female Fat Cell by Debra Waterhouse. The book is about diet and nutrition and why women always lose weight more slowly than men. Six months after publication we had more than a hundred thousand copies of the book in print It made a few best-seller lists and the following rights were sold:
- First serial to Good Housekeeping Magazine: This excerpt (which was mentioned on the cover) appeared just as the books were landing in bookstores around the country.
- Book club rights: Both Book-of-the-Month Club and Literaiy Guild were interested from the time they first saw the manuscript (I submitted the book approximately nine months before our publication.) After six rounds of bidding, rights went to the Literary Guild. We also licensed rights to Better Homes and Gardens Book Club and Rodale Book Club.
- Paperback reprint rights: We originally acquired that title in an auction with other publishers. And when we won, one of the other players decided they would at least get in on the book by trying for paperback rights. They called immediately and offered us a "floor" bid (the lowest bid acceptable) of $20,000, which we accepted. However, after we published the book, the final deal was considerably more than the $20,000 we started with.
- Second serial: We had a bonanza of post publication serializations on this title: The New York Post and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate decided to pick up a three-part excerpt to offer to its subscribers. In addition, various monthly magazines picked up pieces: The Globe, Women's Health Letter, Your Health Magazine, and New Body Magazine.
- Foreign: The author's agent controlled these rights, and she licensed rights to a publisher in England (where the book was a best-seller). The book also appeared in French, German, Italian, and Swedish.
For American publishers, the Frankfurt Book Fair is a chance to license foreign rights-English language rights to non-U.S. publishers and translation rights to publishers around the world. Most of August and September is spent getting ready for this week in October. We send copies of all the books published since the last fair and we prepare fairly complete lists of the books we plan to publish over the next few seasons. We prepare a list of books to discuss with subagents and foreign publishers. Over the five days at the fair, I meet with nearly a hundred different people. I discuss current books as well as proposals for future titles.
I always hope to make sales at the fair. For the most part, though, since the fax machine has made doing worldwide business so manageable, I use the Frankfurt Book Fair as a way to see people face-to- face and gather a bit of extra information about what kind of books might be of interest in a particular market or to a particular editor. Then I hope that over the six months following the fair I'll be able to reap the rewards and make some licenses on my titles.
How can people break into subsidiary rights?
The easiest and probably the most typical way to break into subsidiary rights is to come to New York as a young college graduate and take an entry-level position in a rights department. I have, perhaps twice in the fifteen years I've been in rights departments, known people to come into rights from other avenues-generally from the marketing area of publishing. In order to "make it" in rights at any level, one must have at least some of the following skills/characteristics: good copywriting skills, good negotiating skills, and a familiarity with publishing contracts and the rights marketplace. It also helps to have a sense of humor and inherent need to have fifteen different projects happening simultaneously.
