Foreign Rights

“We are all unicorns in this,” said our agent. She was referring to the following email exchange between her and our publisher which she shared with us:

 Hi Marilyn,  In other news this might be a first for a book I’ve been involved in, but we’re licensing Mongolian translation rights to The Big Book of HR to Beyond Books Publishing. They hope to have their edition out in the first half of 2026 if not sooner.  Best, Michael

Marilyn’s Response:  Mongolian rights.... A first for me too. Very fun!

Imagine opening your email first thing in the morning to find this delightful surprise and amazingly cool news. We had to check a map to make sure we knew exactly where Mongolia was. Why the interest from Mongolia, a land locked country between Russia and China?

This was not the first time we’d been told that foreign rights had been sold for our books, and we knew our books had been sold in other countries. 

This was also not the first time any of our books had been translated into other languages and rather exotic ones we might add: Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Arabic. When we received copies of those books, we were told foreign rights had been sold.

With Michael’s email and reference to translation rights, we now had a host of questions for Marilyn.

What exactly does foreign rights mean? We thought it meant that books were sold all over the world, as some of our had. Well, we learned there is a distinction, even though “foreign rights” often refers to either of the following:

First, foreign sales rights, which is the right to sell books in English in other countries.

Then, foreign translation rights, which is the right to translate the book in languages other than the original. She also explained that with translation rights, there’s a responsibility on the part of the publisher to ensure that a good translator is engaged for the project and that the translation is properly done.

Interestingly, Marilyn shared the fact that foreign sales had fallen off after Covid. That said, she added that books, especially business books like the ones we write, are more and more frequently being read in English, and that the younger generation, or kids as she referred to them, is especially likely to read books in English. How is this affecting big-name authors whose books, as you often hear, are translated into multiple languages? we wondered.

With traditionally published books, the publisher does all the heavy lifting or work. Publication rights and subsidiary rights are usually spelled out in the contract between the publisher and the author, and literary agents help their clients understand these issues. The publisher may have the right to sub-license the subsidiary rights listed in the agreement to third parties—foreign publishers. Of course, publishing houses have the connections with foreign publishers, and they know how to negotiate foreign translation rights. This gives traditionally-published authors an advantage over self-published authors.

Where does all this leave us? With bragging rights, of course. As we responded to Marilyn: “We really are acclaimed, international authors (LOL)!”

Now we are anxiously awaiting that next exotic translation, which we can’t wait to share with you, to add to our collection .