What they are concerned about, however, is competition. Many newspapers, for example, are distributed only within a certain region, such as a city, county, or province. These, and smaller regional magazines, may be interested only in the right to exclusive distribution within their geographic area. If your article is likely to appeal to several such regional publications, consider offering one-time rights to noncompeting magazines. This still leaves you the opportunity to sell the same material to other European magazines, as long as those magazines are published in a language other than English.
Some publications ask for language rights rather than geographic rights.
For example, a publication might seek exclusive German or Japanese translation rights. If such a publication is indeed distributed world-wide, this is not a problem. If, however, a publication has a limited regional distribution, you might wish to specify a geographic limit to those rights. Whenever you write an article that you want to sell more than once, be sure to retain the necessary rights. Other rights transfers offer less obvious pitfalls.