Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
If they have no intention of ever publishing a book they own the rights to, then they need to either accept a reasonable buyout offer for those rights, or risk the rights reverting automatically to the author after a reasonable amount of time.
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What is reasonable?
The answer can't be simple. That thus seems like it would be a pretty complicated law one to deal with what sounds like a rare situation. Also, if the law forced publishers to write contracts in a way that limits their rights to a book, they are going to pay less for the book.
Is there case law on a situation, other than a textbook, like you describe? I mean one where the publisher paid the author an advance, the author supplied a publishable manuscript without plagiarism or other legitimate legal issues, the publisher refused to publish, the author had it published elsewhere, and the publisher successfully sued the author?
If there is a case where the author sold the book to another publisher, and then had to pay back the advance to the first one, I'm probably going to think it was fair. If the author released the advance-paid-not-published book to the public domain, and that's what got him sued, I'm more likely to sympathize with said unfortunate author. Has that ever happened?