: Re: How to sell novel excerpts as short stories Occasionally I've seen novel excerpts published in short story venues. They're usually sections of a recent or forthcoming novel that also hold together

@Smith147

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When you sale a book, the publisher usually asks for something like world rights, or north american rights or world-english rights. The right to publish part of a novel before publication in a magazine or journal is called first serial rights (the term applies to any time a story first appears in a periodical, not just excerpts from forthcoming novels, ie -- magazines also buy first serial rights for stand alone short stories).

Once you've sold your first serial rights, they're gone. No one else can buy them from you. Should it affect the sale of a novel if the first serial rights to a portion are already gone? Not really. It will depend on the publisher and you should be as clear as possible about the history of the piece.

Who sells the rights? If you're under contract with a publisher, it depends. Your contract should specify who can sell which serial rights and when under the heading of subsidiary rights. If the publisher has claimed that right, then it's up to them to sell and collect the proceeds and then split them with you according to the contract. If serial rights aren't mentioned, then they are yours to sell. It'd be nice to at least give the publisher a heads-up, even if they didn't claim the right to sale them themselves because timing can be important. If you can get a magazine to publish an excerpt, you want to maximize the potential exposure so you can turn it into sales of your novel.

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