Xueba Fengyun

The official name of the Royal Press should be "Her Majesty's Clerk". It is the official publishing organization of the British royal family and the government. It is mainly responsible for the publication of various official documents, legal classics and popular science books in the UK.Although the income of this publishing house is more dependent on government funding, its distribution channels in the UK are still very sound.Originally, the Royal Publishing House did not intend to compete for the publishing agency rights of "The Collection of Sherlock Holmes", but Princess Anne, the eldest daughter of the Queen of England, appreciates this book very much, thinking that this book can bring unlimited honor to the UK .Therefore, the Royal Press was forced to participate in the election.But to their surprise, they actually obtained the English distribution rights of the book in the UK.

Liu Miao split the international publishing rights of her books into two kinds of agency rights, language and region, because it is not uncommon for the same region to have two languages.For example, Huaxia has a simplified Chinese version and a traditional Chinese version that is popular in Baodao Province, Mingzhu City and Lianhua City; Spain has a Spanish version and a Catalan version; Canada has an English version and a French version... Liu Miao and Zhang Meiqing values ​​HarperCollins Publishing in business, and their distribution capabilities cover the entire English-speaking world.

However, after consideration, Liu Miao still only gave HarperCollins the right to publish in English in continental Europe, while the French and Spanish versions in continental Europe needed to find another agency.In addition, as the world's largest book consumer market, Liu Miao, the American agency, is more inclined to find a publishing house in the United States.Whether it's Simon & Schuster, Penguin, or Langdon, it's a pity that they haven't seen the popularity of this book yet, so they won't come to Liu Miao at all, so Liu Miao can only look forward to the popularity of this book .

"The 'Sherlock Holmes series' will consist of four novels and six collections of short stories, and it is expected to be written in five years." Liu Miao talked to the European publishers in front of him. They are the Royal Publishing in charge of the British publishing. Press; HarperCollins Publishing, which is responsible for English copyrights in continental Europe; Planet Newspapers, which is responsible for Spanish and Catalan copyrights in Spain; and Hachette Books, which is responsible for French, Italian and other languages.

"At present, the first batch of publishing contracts we have signed with you include the first and second novels of the series, namely "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Four Signatures"; and the first collection of short stories "The Collection of Sherlock Holmes" .What we are asking for is sharing, and the royalties are 15%. The agency agreement signed by you is only the publishing agency agreement of the book, and does not include derivative copyrights such as film and television adaptations. The agreement is signed every five years. After five years, depending on the market situation, we can The proportion of royalties will be adjusted."

Liu Miao had already prepared his own agency agreement, and the 15% royalties can only be regarded as the royalties of first-line authors in China, not the royalties of top authors.As for the royalties of the three supreme gods, it is even higher.However, if it is an overseas agency, Liu Miao can't take all the profits, not to mention the higher cost of publishing books abroad.In comparison, Huaxia's book prices are actually the lowest in the world, because the "exorbitant taxes" faced by Huaxia Book Company are much less.Liu Miao set the psychological price of royalties at 10%, and 15% is just to give everyone room for discussion.

"The 15% royalties are too high. Except for the Royal Press, we can't afford it." HarperCollins Publishing House is the largest publishing institution here, so it naturally became the publisher's partner in this negotiation. Take the lead brother. "After all, the Royal Publishing House enjoys a lot of tax-free benefits in the UK. We are not so lucky. And many of our agreements are actually public. Unless local authors are supported by the state, we can give 15% of the high royalties. In addition; for non-local authors, we only get 5% to 8% of the royalties at most. What's more, you have taken away all the derivative copyrights here, otherwise we can get back a part of the profit subsidy for you through film and television adaptation or portrait authorization Mr. Liu, what do you think?"

In this time and space, there is no such thing as wireless electronic copyright and game adaptation right, so the most important derivative copyrights of novels are film and television adaptation rights and character portrait rights.Of course, film and television adaptation rights are profitable and lose, but character portrait authorization (or called franchise authorization) is a steady stream.Don’t you see that the Disney Pictures Group in the future has suffered a mess, and the parent company Walt Disney still has a substantial increase in assets. After the acquisition of Pixar, it also acquired Marvel.The Walt Disney Company bluntly stated in their financial report that their main income is the franchise.Think about how many products with Mickey Mouse's face are sold around the world?If you buy a genuine schoolbag with Mickey Mouse on it, Walt Disney can easily make a fortune with zero risk.So this group of publishers came here for licensing, and naturally Liu Miao would not give up this future source of income.

Liu Miao chuckled, "Of course I know that the taxation in the publishing industry in various countries is much higher than that in my own country, so I only asked for 15% royalties. You know, my royalties in China are already 25% .In fact, I have given away 10% of the profits to everyone. If you want to lower my royalties, then I will not be able to face the domestic publishing houses. As for the derivative copyright part, it is in accordance with the general overseas distribution agency agreement , there will be no such additional terms at all. Don’t you all see that I am young and easy to bully?” After speaking, Liu Miao suppressed her smile and looked at everyone coldly.

Those booksellers were also a little guilty. According to the international publishing rules, the derivative copyright of the work was generally owned by the author, or the author entrusted the agency to a relevant agency.Even if the author is entrusted to the publishing house, he is acting as an agent for the original publishing house.Overseas copyright agencies like them would never mention this at all.It's just that they knew that the original publishing house was Liu Miao's own publishing house, so they wanted to take advantage of the fact that the Youth Club didn't have much capital to "smear" the derivative copyright.Unexpectedly, Liu Miao is an old fox who knows the rules in the industry, and he doesn't take hard things, which makes the publishing houses don't know how to talk about it.

They were not Liu Miao's only choice. HarperCollins knew that Macmillan and the manager of the overseas publishing department of United Books were still staying in the hotel.Why don't they leave?Didn't you wait for yourself to fail, and immediately come up to take over?Especially now with the popularity of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" among British and French netizens, the demand for physical books is becoming more and more urgent.In comparison, booksellers are much more anxious than authors.Authors' royalties are basically fixed, but booksellers' profits can change over time, so HarperCollins can't afford to wait.In particular, there are two full-length novels and four collections of short stories (not including the serialized ones) behind this series. If I offend the author, if I don’t do the follow-up series for myself, then I’m really planting peaches for others. Come and eat.

"Mr. Liu, we can agree to a 10% royalty, but we require several additional clauses in the agency agreement." The HarperCollins representative finally relented, and the other publishers naturally had nothing to say. "First of all, we have the priority to renew the novels that have been signed; secondly, we have the priority to sign contracts for your other novels; finally, the length of the four novels and 55 short stories cannot be reduced. After all, we hope to make this series Classic, you also have to keep your word."

"Of course, no problem." Liu Miao agreed.Of course, Liu Miao also knew that this group of publishers deliberately used the space to limit themselves, in order to be afraid that they would stop publishing something midway, so Liu Miao would naturally not do things that would ruin his reputation.

After negotiating with Liu Miao, the rest is for the lawyers of both parties to come out and start correcting various words.Because it involves international copyright agency, in addition to the legal department of the Youth Club and Liu Miao's personal lawyer, Liu Miao also entrusted Citibank to help him find Moore & Foerster Law Firm, which is quite powerful in the field of intellectual property rights in the world, as his attorney .

After the final signing was confirmed, Liu Miao posted several photos of the signing scene on her blog, and then wrote, "Finally, the international copyright of "The Collection of Sherlock Holmes" has been signed out. The Royal Publishing House, HarperCollins Publishing Group, French Hachette Book Company and Spanish Planet Newspaper Group will be responsible for the publication of this book in various languages ​​in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Finally, I would like to thank Her Royal Highness Princess Anne for her recommendation, otherwise this book would not have had the chance to be published. Readers outside of China understand."

Liu Miao's current blog is still posted in the recommendation area of ​​the Penguin Blog Channel, so Liu Miao's blog traffic is quite large. In addition, Liu Miao has serialized "The First Intimate Contact" and "Same with the Stewardess" on the blog.Therefore, the number of fans of Liu Miao's blog can also be ranked among the top ten in the entire Penguin blog channel.After Liu Miao announced the news, Liu Miao's supporters couldn't help but be overjoyed.After all, if the author I like has the opportunity to publish a book overseas, it is also a sign of "wisdom" for readers, isn't it?Therefore, the congratulations at the end of Liu Miao's blog are not right. Besides, there are many new authors who are also serialized on the blog, and they are advertising while celebrating.

Liu Miao is considered the most tolerant of bloggers. As long as it is not a link to a non-Tencent blog or a completely false advertisement, Liu Miao generally does not object to other authors advertising under their own blog logs.Sometimes, Liu Miao would also follow these advertisement links to search for books.After all, in addition to being an author, Liu Miao also has the identity of a publisher. Maybe he can find future San Shao, potatoes, and tomatoes on Penguin Blog?

But there are those who support it and those who oppose it.There are no more than two types of people who oppose Liu Miao. One is people who really don't like Liu Miao's novels. These people are relatively polite and black, usually just discussing the facts and belittling the novel; the other is purely jealous of Liu Miao. People, after all, Liu Miao's family background and his own achievements are of the kind that make people envy and hate, so this kind of extreme blackness against Liu Miao is not so polite.They all questioned Liu Miao's deliberate release of fake news, especially when she was dragging Princess Anne of the United Kingdom to stir up news. Aren't they afraid that the police uncle will come to deliver the courier?Especially on the Green Mountain Forum, some people have already jointly said that they will complain to the British Embassy in China about Liu Miao.

What is Green Mountain Forum?In fact, the Green Mountain Forum and the Fengchao Forum are similar in nature, and most of them are places where there are many authors, so there are a lot of gossip in various industries.But Fengchao needs to register, and the registration threshold is quite high, so the credibility of Fengchao's gossip is much higher.However, the complete anonymity system of the Green Mountain Forum leads to the fact that most of the gossip here is groundless, and since the permanent residents in Green Mountain are a group of depressed writers, over time, any popular author here is like a mad dog seeing meat buns. Pounce on it and bite it.And as the notoriety of the Green Mountain Forum spread far and wide, more authors stayed away from here because they cherished their feathers, so the atmosphere here became more and more depraved.