Today we think about spin-offs. One of the secrets of making money writing is to maximize the return on your efforts. Ideally, this means that you sell first rights to a magazine and then resell the identical article elsewhere. However, if you are going to do this, you have to have an active plan for selling reprints, second rights and foreign rights.
However, what I prefer to do is variations on a theme. For instance, suppose I wrote an article on using the internet for research. If I sold the first rights to it, after it was published I could resell it just as it is. Even if I sold all rights, and I sometimes do, I can still use the same research and basic concept and write new articles based on aspects of the primary article. Actually I did sell just such an article, and the first rights only, but it's the kind of article that becomes outdated very very quickly so I couldn't resell it now if I wanted to. It came out in April. If I had an immediate buyer for it, it would be the fall at the earliest before it was reprinted and because it's about the net, some of the links and sources I mentioned will likely have changed.
I know that many writers are very concerned about the rights that they sell and for those interested, the absolute best source for information on rights is at the American Society of Journalists and Authors site (http://www.asja.org/). Because ASJA can tell you much more than I ever could imagine on the latest word on rights, I am referring you to that page for information on rights.
This particular session is about maximizing your research. A couple of you who are writing fiction mentioned in your vision of your future as a writer, that you would write fiction and take a break from time to time to write non-fiction using the research that you had gathered for your fiction. This is the sort of approach I recommend. (No, I'm not saying that you should not be concerned about the rights that you sell. But I should note that I often do work for hire and sell all rights to what I have produced. However, the research is still mine and I do reuse it. This works very well for me because much of the writing I do becomes dated quickly. It will not necessarily work for everyone but if you do go to the effort of making sure that you only sell first rights, make all efforts to resell your work. Otherwise, what's the point of having reprint rights?)
