[AnemicOak]

In the fourth installment of its Fair Contract Initiative, first introduced at BookExpo America, the Authors Guild took a deep dive into contract time limits, subrights, and out of print clauses. The latest entry, called "A Publishing Contract Should Not Be Forever," was posted on Guild's website Tuesday morning. It expands on the Guild's previous post, revealed in June, which called for an overhaul of royalty rates and a general re-examination of an author's right to his or her work, suggesting specific changes to contract boilerplates.

"There’s no good reason why a book should be held hostage by a publisher for the lifetime of the copyright, the life of the author plus seventy years—essentially forever," the Guild wrote. "Yet that’s precisely what happens today. A publisher may go bankrupt or be bought by a conglomerate, the editors who championed the author may go on to other companies, the sales force may fail to establish the title in the marketplace and ignore it thereafter, but no matter how badly the publisher mishandles the book, the author’s agreement with the original publisher is likely to remain in effect for many decades."

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...t-changes.html

https://www.authorsguild.org/industr...ot-be-forever/