author, performer, speaker, activist Julia Serano

Excerpts and Translations FAQ

I often receive requests to excerpt or reprint my writings, or to translate them into other languages. Hopefully this page will answer all your questions.

For excerpts and reprints: The publishing rights to my books Whipping Girl, Excluded, and Sexed Up are controlled by Seal Press, which is an imprint of Hachette Book Group. This means that they—*and only they*—can grant permission for excerpts or reprints from those books. Please consult Hachette’s FAQ page for instructions on how to contact them about this (see “Rights and Permissions” section).

Since it can sometimes take a while to hear back from Hachette, here are a few notes/suggestions:

According to the Fair Use doctrine, fairly short excerpts can be used without permission provided that they are properly cited. While there is no cut-and-dried word limit here, I have been told that excerpts of 50 words or less are generally considered safe. If the excerpt is longer, you might want to secure permission.
From what I can gather, obtaining permission for excerpts is significantly more important if the excerpts will be included in a for-profit venture (e.g., a book you will be selling). If the excerpt appears in a non-profit context (e.g., your personal blog), I doubt that you will encounter problems provided that you aren't posting large swaths of my book online or distributing a large number of physical copies.
If you wish to reprint or excerpt parts of my books for educational purposes (e.g., a class you are teaching), there are complicated rules surrounding that that I am not fully knowledgeable about. I suggest that you ask folks at your school/institution, as they will usually have guidelines for this sort of thing.
These notes/suggestions are *merely suggestions* and should not be misconstrued as legal advice or permission on my part.

I hold the publishing rights to my self-published books Outspoken and 99 Erics, as well as to most of my non-academic-journal articles and essays, so you should contact me for those permissions if you are excerpting more than a couple hundred words. If it is a significant excerpt (e.g., most or all of a chapter or essay), I may request a licensing fee for use of my work.

For translations: Seal Press/Hachette Book Group control translation rights for my books Whipping Girl and Sexed Up, so you would need to negotiate that with them. So you know, they do not accept requests from individual translators. So if you are interested in translating either of those books, you should first convince an established publisher in your language to publish your proposed translation, then they can negotiate a deal with Hachette (once again, see Hachette’s FAQ page). If your publisher has any problems reaching them, feel free to email me and I can try to connect you to the right person.

I control translation rights for my books Excluded, Outspoken, and 99 Erics. So if you have a publisher who is interested in publishing your translation of one of those books, please have them contact me and hopefully we can make it work.

Similarly, if you want to translate a chapter from one of the aforementioned books or one of my self-published essays for publication in a book or some other for-profit venture, please contact me and we can discuss those details (which may include a licensing fee).

Finally, I often get requests from individuals who want to translate one of my Medium or Substack essays into another language to post online for activist purposes. As a general rule, I am okay with this provided that 1) I am properly credited as the author (with a link to my original essay), 2) nobody is making any money off it, and 3) you email me a link to your translation once you are finished. All I ask is that you do not abuse this (e.g., by posting translations of many of my essays). If you do wish to translate multiple pieces, please contact me for permission first.

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