Article
December 4, 2025
The out-of-print or rights reversion clause is not the first provision you want to think about when signing a new book deal, but it may end up being one of the more important. This provision allows you to terminate your publishing agreement and get your rights back when your work is no longer selling well, or no longer “in print,” as defined in the contract.
Most publishing contracts grant rights to the publisher for the full term of copyright—life of the author plus 70 years. An out-of-print or rights reversion clause allows an author to regain their rights and terminate the contract and as such is critical to their ability to make the most use of their work.
Out-of-print clauses also serve as an incentive to publishers to market and sell the books they publish after the initial publication push, but the reality is that most publishers today put little to no effort into marketing and selling mid-list books within two to three years after publication. As such, the out-of-print clause allows an author to regain their rights if their publisher stops selling the book in any meaningful way, enabling the author to republish the book themselves or sell the rights to another publisher.
Additionally, all the class action suits brought on behalf of authors against AI companies for infringing millions of books in the course of training their AI models mean that understanding the details of your out-of-print clause and asking for your rights back is more important than ever. In Bartz v. Anthropic, the parties settled for $1.5 billion for the piracy claims alone, amounting to approximately $3,000 per book. This settlement award is typically split between authors and their publishers, but self-published authors and authors whose rights have reverted are able to claim the full amount.
Most out of print clauses have four main elements:
The definition of “out of print” or conversely “in print” is a very important piece of the reversion clause. This definition sets the conditions for a work to be eligible for a reversion and can vary greatly by both publisher and individual contract. In the past, out-of-print clauses specified that a work was “in print” if it was available and offered for sale in the United States through normal retail channels in an English language (hardcover or paperback) edition issued by the publisher and listed in the catalog issued to the trade by the publisher.
With the emergence of ebooks and print on demand (POD) technologies, some publishers moved to out-of-print clauses that provide that the work was “in print” as long as it was available in any format, including electronic and print on demand. Those clauses soon proved quite unfair because, unlike clauses that limit a book’s “in print” status to physical formats, including electronic or print on demand versions in the “in print” definition allows the publisher to keep the book in print without having to undertake a new printing or do anything else. As a result, the book could remain on the publisher’s backlist without any investment—often with no or negligible sales, making the out-of-print clause essentially meaningless.
The major publishers, with some pressure from agents and the Authors Guild, agreed to add a provision with a royalty or sales threshold to determine if the book is in print. These clauses state that a work is deemed out of print if the royalties fall below a certain level—say $150 or $300 in a single year (two consecutive royalty periods)—or if a book does not sell a specified number of copies in a year. If your contract does not have this option for a book to be deemed out of print, you should insist on adding it.
Importantly, note that while some contracts use sales instead of a royalty threshold in their definition of “in print,” the Guild strongly recommends using a royalty threshold as a sales threshold allows the publisher to continue selling the work at deep discounts with the author receiving very little in royalties.
As a preliminary matter, out-of-print clauses normally provide that the reversion right may not be terminated until two or three years after publication, regardless of whether the work meets the out-of-print definition. This is to give the publisher enough time to try to sell the book and make its investment back. The amount of time should account for the publisher’s planned rollout of the book in different formats and for selling foreign rights, but as a general rule for trade books, the date should not be further out than three years.
Once the initial period has passed, you should keep track of your royalties or other information needed to determine whether the book meets the out-of-print definition in your contract.
If your contract provides for a reversion if royalties (or sales) are under a certain threshold for specified royalty periods (usually a year), then you have the right to request your rights back as soon as the specified period (e.g., two accounting periods) has elapsed since your royalties fell under the stated threshold. Note that many contracts still only apply the royalty or sales threshold to electronic and print on demand formats and use the traditional out-of-print standard for physical books (meaning both that the book must be unavailable in print form AND the royalties or sales from electronic and POD formats must be below the specified threshold).
If the contract uses the old “in-stock” (or similar) standard rather than a royalty threshold one, then you will need to keep track of whether the publisher is still making the book available. Unfortunately, publishers do not volunteer information about whether a book is out of print, so it is up to you to check.
There are several ways you can check to see if your work is in print:
Under a typical reversion clause, the author is required to send a notice to the publisher that they would like the publisher to put the book into print or revert rights in accordance with the language in the contract. The Authors Guild can provide a demand letter template; members can submit a legal request here.
The publisher then typically has a certain time period (usually six months) from the notice to state its intention to put the work back into print or revert rights. If the publisher says it will bring the book back into print but does not do so within another stated period of time (usually a year from the notice date), then the rights will revert automatically.
While most contracts provide automatic reversion, some stipulate that reversion only occurs if a publisher responds. In such cases, you should try to negotiate a change so that reversion is automatic since it should not be on the author to make sure the publisher sends a confirmation or reversion letter and since it can take time to get confirmation from a busy publisher. While publishers often do send a reversion notice as a courtesy, it is not always the case.
Even though a reversion letter from the publisher should not be necessary for the reversion to be effective, obtaining one does simplify the process of republishing. Amazon, for instance, requires documentation of rights ownership, and the easiest way to show that is through a reversion letter. That said, documentation of the contract and your notice should suffice. The Authors Guild assists members in resolving issues with Amazon, including issues related to republishing books after rights reversion. If you’re having trouble bringing your book back in print, send us a legal request.
Rights reversion affects how much of an award you can claim in a class-action lawsuit, including the settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic. If your book is on the works list in the settlement (you can check here) and your rights have already reverted to you, then you can claim the entire award of approximately $3,000, and your publisher is entitled to nothing. In such cases, you should check the “sole owner” box in the claim form and be sure to do so as long as you fulfill all of your obligations in the book contract’s out-of-print clause—whether or not you ever received confirmation from the publisher.
If, however, you never sent the required notice or otherwise failed to comply with the terms in your contract for getting your rights back, no matter how long the book has been “out of print,” you likely will have to split the award with the publisher, if still extant—even if the book has been out of print and unavailable in the marketplace for decades. The Authors Guild is not happy with that outcome as we do not believe publishers should be entitled to a share of infringed proceeds for books they have done nothing for in years, much less protected against infringement, but the contracts say what they say, and the court envisages splits that line up squarely with the contracts.
In all events, it is important to determine your book’s rights status under the actual terms of your contract and to fill out the claim form accordingly to make the most of the potential damages in the Bartz case. Also bear in mind that you need to file your own claim even if the book is still in print or you never got your rights reverted. If you received a notice to the contrary from your publisher that it can file for you and distribute the proceeds to you, it is incorrect.
Step 1: Check if your book is “available” or “in print” in accordance with the contract.
Step 2: If your book qualifies for a reversion, send a reversion notice (very important).
The lesson for authors and agents alike is to make sure to follow the contractual process and send notice to get rights back once a book qualifies as out of print. Yes, you might sell film rights one day, or someone might write an article, or some other event might occur that brings new attention to your book, but don’t keep the rights with the publisher just in case. The fact is that if you have your rights back and there is new demand for your book, you can in all likelihood resell the rights and maybe even get a new advance—and in this day and age you can always self-publish and keep most of the proceeds from sales.
If you have any questions concerning your out-of-print clause, please fill out a legal help request form or contact staff@authorsguild.org.
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