Back from the fair with a notebook full of meetings
Twenty-five meetings in three days, most of them half-hour slots with editors and scouts. After each, the rights manager scribbled the titles discussed and who wanted a PDF. Back in the office there are forty promised submissions to send, plus the follow-ups from last spring that never got an answer.
The rights guide is a PDF. The submissions record is a spreadsheet with a row per title and a crowded cell listing territories and names. A Dutch editor asks for the proof of a book the Italian sub-agent already has on exclusive, and the rights manager is not sure whether that exclusive ran out last week.
Why the submissions record gets muddled
A submission is a relationship between one title, one territory, one buyer and one date, with an outcome. A spreadsheet row per title can't hold that without turning into free text.
- The same editor sees several titles; the same title goes to several editors.
- Sub-agents handle some territories and report back in their own format.
- Exclusive looks and options have end dates that decide what can be sent to whom.
- Declines are rarely recorded, so a title is sent to the same editor twice.
- Scouts' interest is noted but not linked to the publishers they work for.
Material also changes over time. The first submission may have been a partial manuscript, the second an edited proof, the third a finished copy with quotes. An editor who read the partial deserves the finished book if they were keen, but without a record of what went to whom, that follow-up depends on the rights manager's memory.
What a muddled record costs rights sales
| Slip | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Exclusive not tracked | A title is shown to a rival publisher during someone's exclusive |
| Decline not recorded | A book is resubmitted to an editor who already passed |
| Follow-up forgotten | Interest cools and the sale does not happen |
| Material version unclear | An editor reads an old draft instead of the final text |
| No territory view | You cannot see which markets have not seen a strong title |
A tracker built around submissions
- A contacts list of foreign editors, publishers, sub-agents and scouts, with the territories and languages each covers.
- A submission record for each title sent to each contact: date, material sent (proof, final PDF, sample translation) and version.
- Option and exclusive periods recorded as dates, with a warning if you try to log a submission that conflicts with one.
- Outcomes: reading, declined with reason, offer, licensed, which update the title's rights record when an offer becomes a deal.
- A follow-up list each week of submissions with no answer after the period you choose.
- A book fair mode: a meeting schedule, notes per meeting, and after the fair a list of promised submissions to send.
If you want, we can pull meeting notes from a shared form you fill on your phone at the fair, so the notebook is replaced rather than transcribed.
What rights selling looks like week to week
After the fair, the promised submissions are already listed. The rights manager sends materials and the log fills in. Each Monday there is a short chasing list. Before sending a title to anyone in a territory, the tracker shows who has seen it, who declined and whether an exclusive is running.
A title page shows every territory with its status, so gaps are obvious: the novel has sold in five languages and no Scandinavian editor has seen it yet.
When an offer arrives, the record already holds everything you need to answer it: who else is reading, whether an option was promised to another house, and which version of the text went out. When the deal is done, the licence is created from the submission, and the rights held record shows the language as licensed, so the next person asking gets the right answer.
Could this be your rights desk?
- Your submissions spreadsheet has cells full of names and dates.
- You have sent a title to an editor who had already declined it.
- Exclusive periods are remembered, not recorded.
- Post-fair follow-ups take weeks to type up.
- Sub-agent reports arrive and are not merged into your own records.