OT: What are "newsstand rights"?

NickHope wrote on 10/20/2005, 11:00 AM

I've had an email from the RBA publishing group in Spain enquiring if "Home-Video Newsstand Rights" would be available for my DVD Reef Life of the Andaman. They say they are working on a series of the animal world and would like me to send a screener to study.

Can anyone tell me what exactly "Home Video Newsstand Rights" are and what kind of deal a publisher might negotiate for them? I somehow doubt it literally means rights to sell my DVD on newsstands in Spain. Or perhaps it does??? Also I hope by "home video" they mean "a video to play at home", as it's definitely no home video by the more common meaning of the phrase.

A quick look at their site shows they're selling your first 3 x Attenborough DVD's for 4.95 euros on a subscription basis, which is a lot cheaper than I'm selling mine so far. So I want to tread carefully and not devalue the product or undersell it. Any advice or experience would be most welcome.

Thanks,

Nick

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 10/20/2005, 11:36 AM

This usually refers to them selling into newsstands/kiosks, no distribution channel, and special buy/sell price incentives. They usually have high reserves for returns, and potentially a huge hit on your revenues depending on the deal. Newsstand sales can be boom or bust. In the music industry, newsstand rights used to be a great thing, but today, it costs too much to sell this way for the artist. Only the distributor makes money because of POP costs, etc.
As far as "home video" they likely mean video for display in a residential sense, vs negotiating anything that would be broadcast over cable or network. You'd likely retain those rights.
Cheap prices are almost always found on newsstands because they're shooting for the impulse buy. These deals are usually quite short as well, such as in the realm of 6 months.
Good luck!

NickHope wrote on 10/20/2005, 9:49 PM

Thanks very much Spot for the reply. It's very much appreciated. Obviously I'll be replying them very shortly but I'm just trying to get a bit more business knowledge into my naive brain before I do.

POP costs = point of purchase costs, right?

They are in Spain and I am in Thailand, producing discs so far only myself on home-printed DVD-R. I haven't gone to a larger quantity of pressed discs yet, although I have had initial discussions with a manufacturer here.

Do you think they would expect me to actually produce the discs and export, or would they just be looking to license the content? I expect they would want their own Spanish artwork done by themselves.

Is it possible I might get lumbered with a very large number of unsold discs if they don't sell well? Or even an expensive bill?

Ideally I would be hoping for them to manufacture the discs themselves and to pay me a royalty on whatever they sell, with no charge backs. Would this be a typical arrangement or am I dreaming?

Would it be normal to sign a yearly deal for this kind of thing, or perpetual? Or even a one-off fee? Any feel for a typical royalty percentage?

And is there anything besides the obvious that I should make sure goes in the licence agreement?

Nick

Spot|DSE wrote on 10/20/2005, 11:10 PM

As far as delivery, they may be expecting finished content, or they may want license, that allows them to insert their own marketing messaging, language, artwork, or identity. That needs to be specifically addressed in your agreement with them. You could be saddled with an expensive bill anyway, if the license agreement is recoupable to them (which it often is) Chargebacks/returns are often negotiable.
Try for a one-off, with you owning all rights outside of Spain so that you are free to market to whomever you wish. If they don't want to do a limited one-off (you agree to license XXXX number of copies to them, or XXX number of reprints within a certain period of time) then shoot for a year agreement. Perpetual benefits no one, IMO.
I don't know anything at all about the Spain market, so I don't know what profits, royalty shares, etc are available. We have a distributor here that manages that sort of thing for us.
Remember two things always:
1. They want your content.
2. Everything is negotiable.

Don't get so excited at the prospect of distribution that you give away the cow, but also don't get greedy and needy. The path to every partners profit should be clear and clean, and if it's not, it's usually because someone is trying to hide something, somewhere.

NickHope wrote on 11/3/2005, 8:04 PM

Spot, thanks again for your helpful replies.

Well, they've made me an attractive offer which comprises a 4-figure advance plus a royalty per DVD sold :-) The term is 3 years, territory Spain. They're estimating 20k copies over 3 years. They'll be authoring and manufacturing by themselves and there's nothing in the agreement about returns. So I'm happy.

A couple of IP issues have surfaced as a result, which I'll start on new threads.

Nick