Fortunately, many publishers allow their material to be reprinted for the sake of free publicity, requiring other publishers to include a promotional signature in exchange for free reprint rights. However, don't make the mistake of assuming that this is true in all cases. Many email publishers don't allow free reprints of any kind. These publishers often want to preserve the uniqueness of their content so that their subscribers don't go elsewhere to receive the same thing.

If the value of your ezine is increased by having content appear there that hasn't previously appeared elsewhere, does it also mean that the value of your content can be diluted by having it subsequently reprinted elsewhere? Are you putting yourself at any kind of risk by allowing others to reprint your articles?

Here are some of the things that you could be missing out on if you allow your articles to be reprinted:

1. You may miss out on any possible revenue from syndication or co-branding of your articles. If someone can reprint them by just including your promotional tag line, why would they ever pay you for that content?

2. You run the chance that someone could get more out of your content that you could. Imagine someone compiling all of your articles on to a CD-ROM and selling it for £25.00 a copy! You don't allow this? Make sure people know that.

3. If a large audience can get your content elsewhere, why should they come to you?

On the other hand, allowing other publishers to reprint your content in exchange for a 6-8 line promotional tag at the end is an excellent means of free promotion. Just be sure to weigh the risks involved, and strive to be very aware of what others are doing with those articles if you do decide to allow reprints.

Keep in mind:

1. Only grant the right to reprint your articles on a case-by-case basis. Never give anyone free reign to reprint anything you've written.

2. Only allow some of your articles to be reprinted, say one per month or so. This will prevent your content from becoming diluted.

3. Implement some kind of formal request for reprints, so you can keep careful track of who's doing what. If someone's reprinted something of yours without going through the formalities, you'll know something is amiss.

Permissions

You should always ask permission before reprinting an article that you didn't create yourself. Hopefully this strikes you as obvious. But the theft of original content is rising.

Reprint content without permission, and you may be putting yourself at significant legal risk, even if you do give credit to the original author or publisher. Copyright infringement can get very ugly and costly.

Don't say, "If I don't hear something back from you, I'll assume this is okay."

Many ezine publishers are very busy people, and the assumption that they will respond if they don't want you to reprint their content is inconsiderate at best. Always wait until you have explicit written permission from a person or organization before running their content.

Many publishers will be more than happy to let you reprint their articles with credit. Just don't assume you have this right. Always ask first, and if you receive no response or a negative reply, you'll need to look elsewhere

Reprint rights strategies:

None. Anyone can take anything of yours at any time without any permission from you or any of your editors/contributors.
Conditional Reprints Allowed. This is where you set up a reprint policy in advance, which allows anyone to reprint your "works" without permission, as long as they follow your guidelines.
Case by Case Reprint Rights. This is where you have a form on your website or a special email address where folks can request reprint rights, and you can engage them on a one-to-one basis to determine what you want to do with the opportunity. One strategy that has worked, is to allow reprints for free for a 6 or 12 month period to anyone who can give you exposure greater than or equal to the value that you might be able to receive if you were syndicating or licensing your content.
? Syndication. This means that you get money for each reprint, and the monetary value is usually equal to a discounted value of the size of the article based on what it cost to produce in the first place. Example, if a 2000 word article costs £2000, you might sell the reprint rights for 25% or £500.

List-Tips Secret: Whether you are giving FREE reprint rights or are attempting to sell the rights to your content, think in terms of licensing content, rather than selling content. This means that you license the right to duplicate your specific content on a specific site for a specific amount of time. By doing so, you preserve the value and you control who's reprinting what content where.

Contributors Key Point: If you have guest contributing writers and authors, make sure you have them sign off of their rights to additional compensation if you license or syndicate your content in the future. Technically, even though they gave you the content for free, or in exchange of promotional value or currency, you still need their written permission to reprint their works, and it's better to get a blanket agreement for all 'works' they may contribute to you, your lists and your website.

Discussion List Reprint Rights:

This is a very new area, and not much has been set in precedence yet as to if you need permission to reprint authors works or not. Most are not asking for permission of discussion list members when they create a "Best of this or that discussion list" for a newsletter or posting it on their website. When in doubt, get permission, and in all cases if you opt to not get permission, always give authors an opportunity not to have their "works" reprinted anywhere.