Rights and ownership
Do You Keep the Rights to Your Book When You Hire a Publishing Company?
What "you keep every right and every royalty" means in practice, and the questions to ask before you sign any publishing agreement.
September 25, 2026 · 2 min read
This is the single most important question to ask before you hire anyone to help publish your book, and it's the one authors ask least often — usually because they assume the answer is obviously yes.
"Rights" means more than one thing
Copyright is the legal ownership of the work itself. Royalties are the income the book earns. The ISBN determines who is recorded as the book's publisher of record. A service provider can hold any combination of these without saying so plainly, so ask about all three separately, not just "do I own my book."
Read the agreement before you read the pitch
A sales conversation can promise anything. The agreement is what actually governs the relationship. Before you pay anything, get the ownership terms in writing: who holds copyright, who is the publisher of record on the ISBN, and what happens to your files if you decide to leave.
Watch for language about "exclusive" rights
Some publishing agreements ask for exclusive rights to distribute or license your work, sometimes for a fixed term, sometimes indefinitely. That is a materially different arrangement from a service provider simply doing work you own outright. Neither is automatically wrong, but you should know which one you are signing.
Ask what happens if you want to leave
A fair test of any publishing relationship: can you take your files, your ISBN and your manuscript elsewhere if you're not happy? If the honest answer is no, or it's unclear, that tells you more about the arrangement than anything in the sales material.
How this works with us
You keep every right and every royalty, at every stage, and it's written into the agreement before any work begins — not as a policy we mention, but as a term you can hold us to. If you ever want to take your book and its files elsewhere, we hand over what you need to do it.
Key takeaways
- Copyright, royalties and publisher-of-record status are three separate things — ask about each.
- Get ownership terms from the written agreement, not the sales conversation.
- "Exclusive rights" clauses are a real, different arrangement — read for them specifically.
- A fair publisher lets you leave with your files if you want to.
Start here
Send us the first three chapters.
We will read them and tell you honestly what your book needs. No cost, no obligation, no pitch deck.