[JoeD]

If no book was provided, fair enough. Wonder how the contract terms would deal with non acceptance of a manuscript though.

Clearly a publisher would want to be able to reject a manuscript of pure gibberish should an author try to pull a fast one and in that case, I'd hope they'd get the advance back too, but I'm not sure how they could work that into the terms without it giving them a get out of publishing free card which would be unfair to genuine authors.

e.g what if the work is just utter garbage but the author has actually done the work and produced. Or, the work is decent but the publisher decides it's not good enough to publish and not worth funding a rewrite (assuming author is unwilling to rewrite for free). Would the publisher just write off the first instalment and swear never to work with that author again? Or is it the norm for contract terms to allow claw back of all advances if the publisher doesn't accept the submission (which would seem highly unfair to me)