I decided to write an article for us about estate planning for self-publishers, to get us started on the topic. So, to get ready, I did a quick internet search on “succession planning for self-publishers”, and received two suggestions with generic titles. I picked one of them and discovered…. my very own article on the topic from 2019! Now, I assume that my own identity as a questioner was automatically included as one of the parameters in my search, so this wasn’t completely random, but it certainly gave me a start. 🙂
The article is here: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/author-business-estate-planning/
Despite the passage of several years, and a request for comments from people who had brighter ideas than I could come up with at the time, I’m really no further along than I was then about what to do, in a situation with no natural heirs. I had high hopes for a lot of little business men to develop in self-publishing, but that hasn’t happened the way I expected. Certainly, many authors have created sturdy piles of popular publications, using all the publishing and distribution tools of the industry, but (barring some meteors, like J. K. Rowling who become real businesses) few (to my knowledge) seem to have the succession urge to create long term businesses that can outlive them as businesses, say consolidating other self publishers into larger entities.
Anyone have any bright ideas? Have some of you started work on entities that can outlast you, with or without conventional heirs?
Without heirs, I’m not all that concerned about the passing along of my earnings. I’d be content to contribute the rights to another entity. But it would be depressing to think my books would not survive me in some form.
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “Estate Planning”
Who would receive the rest of your legacy, if anyone? What plans do you have for estate settlement in general? You can create a trust that would administer the rights, and create criteria for conferral on someone else, should a suitable literary heir arise at a future date. Or consign royalties to a charity of your choosing, while the trust continues to keep the works alive. The problem with trusts, of course, is choosing the trustee(s). And as authors know, the business part of writing is a significant endeavor on its own. Of course, if you don’t have heirs relying on the royalty income, you could simply put your works into the public domain upon your death, as well.
How much of the business process plan is about writing workflow, and how much is publishing/marketing? Are the processes and accesses documented such that the executor or trustee can replicate them or gain entry into accounts and log-ins to shut them down or keep them operating?
My issue is really about the mechanics. How to put books into public domain, how to identify a trustee (and compensate them), and so forth.
The easiest way to put works in public domain is to add a copyleft license to the works. Creative Commons licenses are well tested,
https://creativecommons.org/chooser/
Thanks!
I have no children, but I do have a younger sibling who is sympathetic to my writing ambitions and to whom I would probably assign my copyrights and logins, assuming I predeceased the sibling and post-deceased our parents. If I were the last sibling standing, which seems unlikely, maybe a niece or nephew.
We’ve talked about this with our kids, none of whom are interested in publishing. Dear Son often points out that we’d make more $$ working at McDonald’s.
Our suggestion — and we may do this ourselves in a few years — is to sell the rights to preselected smaller publishers.
The Sherlocks would go to Gasogene or other Sherlock-specific publishers (I may have the name wrong here). They’d be the only people interested AND Sherlock is their sole focus.
The movie review books (two to date and we hope to end up with five) would go to another specialist, we’re not sure who.
The “Sew Cloth Grocery Bags” would go to one of the many craft and sewing book specialists.
The Writing-Related books should go to Writers’ Digest or someone similar. Maybe they’d take them. Maybe not.
After that, it gets harder. Sunbury is an up and coming publisher in Central PA. They’re expanding enough that we’ve seen the publisher troll local book events checking out the offerings. Maybe he’d take them.
It really depends on the book. Is it a perennial like a specialized sewing manual? Or tied to a big name like Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers or Sherlock Holmes?
Our fiction is the least valuable in our line and would be the hardest to sell. Everybody writes fiction. The nonfiction and the annotated have a better market value simply because they aren’t common.
A reasonable contract would mean a small royalty coming in for years to come AND the books would have a greater chance of remaining in print.
I named my middle son my literary executor and willed him the right to my books. It will not be much, but he helped me with my books (photography), so it is more by way of thanking him than stinting my other heirs. The royalty checks are too small to split up.
I had a lawyer draw up my will after my wife died. There was only us, so we had no need of a will before that. I’m donating half of whatever’s left of my estate to the Heinlein Society. As to my own rights, my will as, I’ve instructed my executor, specifies that they become public domain upon my demise. I’d rather be Alexander Dumas than Ted Sturgeon when I’m gone, and I’ve seen enough of heirs who are either careless or overprotective of their inherited copyrights.
Will anybody discover my or my wife’s work after I’m gone? That’s not up to me. As I age, I’ve considered adding a sentence at the end of each book, saying that, upon my demise, it becomes public domain.