Have you written a book that has fallen out of print, or isn’t selling as well as it used to? Would you like to open that content to a wider audience, perhaps by creating a digital edition, re-releasing a print edition, or making the work available under an open access license? Today, there are more options for distribution available than ever before, but many publishing contracts were written in a pre-digital world, with terms that lasted beyond an author’s lifetime. Now that these contracts have been outpaced by new technologies, there has never been a more compelling time for authors to re-evaluate their publishing options.

Fortunately, many of our members are working successfully with their publishers to sort out the rights issues standing between their work and the broad audiences new technologies enables. If your goal is to broaden your readership by making your own decisions about how to make your work available, you might want to consider “rights reversion”. A right of reversion is a contractual provision that permits authors to work with their publishers to regain some or all of the rights in their books when certain conditions are met. But authors may also be able to revert rights even if they have not met the triggering conditions in their contract, or if their contracts do not have a reversion clause at all! Reversion can be a powerful tool for authors, but many authors do not know where to start.

Our rights reversion resources are designed to help you take control of your copyrights and make your works newly available in the ways you want.

• Download or purchase Authors Alliance’s Understanding Rights Reversion: When, Why, & How to Regain Copyright and Make Your Book More Available, a guide that arms authors with the information and strategies they need to revive their books.
• Use Authors Alliance’s templates and guidance on how to craft a persuasive rights reversion letter to your publisher.
• Watch our archived webinar for a step-by-step look at how authors can regain rights from publishers.
• Be inspired by and learn from Authors Alliance members’ rights reversion success stories, featuring authors who successfully regained their copyrights and given their works a new life.
• Find out more about what happens at the point when a publisher agrees to revert rights including information on getting the files and permissions you need, tracking ongoing obligations, purchasing inventory, and updating ownership records with the U.S. Copyright Office.
• Learn how to track down digital copies of reverted works to take advantages of online publishing options and reach wider audiences.
• Visit our termination of transfer page to learn about another option for regaining rights to previously published works.
• Contact us at reversions@authorsalliance.org with questions or to share your reversion success story.