Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Random House sued Rosetta and ended up settling on Rosetta terms, more or less, to keep the case from being openly decided.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/p...k-lawsuit.html
More recently, Open Road and HC have been fighting over JULIE OF THE WOLVES and contract language gratuitously inserted by the idiot agent back in the 70's. The outcome of that one is that basically neither side has the rights to the ebook. HC claims exclusive rights but only if the author agrees and their terms were so bad the author refused. Now the author is dead so the countdown to PD finally started. The title might make it to ebooks circa 2080...
Publishing contracts are a minefield and since there is no certification for agents nor any requirement they know a darn thing about contract or IP law, the best recommendation for any author thinking of tradpub these days is to hire a good IP lawyer out of their own pocket to fisk both the agent and publisher contracts.
(Because as bad as the publisher horror stories get, the agent stories are worse.) |
yep, you have to have a good lawyer who specializes in contract law.
One strategy of litigation when you don't have a very good case but have deep pockets (or a team of lawyers on staff) is to drag out the case trying to make it so expensive that the other side settles simply to end the expense.
Just as a note, it's not true that neither has the ebooks rights. One of them does, it's just unclear which and apparently the rights aren't worth enough to spend the money on a trial.