Author's Guild - A Publishing Contract Should Not Be Forever

[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/

[fjtorres]

$250? Minimum?
The BPHs can find that much in the seat cushions of creative accounting if it lets them squat on the rights forever.

[howyoudoin]

At first glance, I do find myself agreeing with the authors in principle.

But knowing the sort of disingenuous arguments that the Authors guild generally trots out, I can't help but feel that there's a catch somewhere in there

[howyoudoin]

When a publisher fails to keep a book on the market in a profitable way, the author should get all the rights back. This is more important today than ever, since e-books and print-on-demand make it easy for authors to republish their backlists: a recent study conducted by the British Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) showed that 70% of authors who were able to reclaim their rights were able to earn more money from the work in question.

Oh, now the authors suddenly realize the value of self publishing platforms like Amazon.

[DiapDealer]

Boy, they really have the whole "we don't really know what we want, but we damn sure know what we DON'T want (and who we don't want it FROM)" bit down pat, don't they?

[murg]

"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.

So the Guild is admitting that current copyright law is not 'for a limited time'...

[eschwartz]

In the ideal traditional publishing partnership—where the publisher nourished the author’s career; where the same editor worked closely with the author over decades, editing and reworking books and new book ideas; where the publisher actively marketed and promoted the author and gave the author a sufficient advance to live on between books—then it might have made sense for the publisher to own the rights for the entire copyright term. But that is the rare author-publisher relationship today.

(emphasis mine)



Well, well, well. Good of them to admit it. So, then, does that mean it is the rare author who gets an actual benefit from trad-pubbing?

[Pulpmeister]

Ten years is enough. If the book is going gangbusters, it's an incentive for the publishers to make sure their dealing with the author is favourable enough for the author to renew, otherwise they deserve to lose the book. On the other hand, if a book is more or less abandoned and lingers in limbo, the author ought to get copyright back as a matter of right, and find a better home for it.

My own few publishing contracts gave full rights back to me when the books went out of print, which two have so far. Those two have been republished by me in digital form. The third is still in print, though getting to the end of its life (the publisher does not remainder), so a digital edition by me, or a third party e-publisher, is now becoming a possibility in the not too distant future.

The idea that the publishers of these books should retain publishing rights for thne rest of my life, PLUS, is a horrifying idea. Absolutely no way.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

My own few publishing contracts gave full rights back to me when the books went out of print, which two have so far.

Some older contracts that don't specify POD separately have publishers treating print on demand availability as "in print".

As usual, writers and their agents were behind the curve on this thing, and only recently started adding the phrase along the lines of “the availability of a print-on-demand edition of the book does not count toward the in-print definition in this contract.”

The only reason I can’t get my rights back on my last remaining title with Simon and Schuster is because my very old contract with them does not have that line, and S&S counts the POD availability as “in-print.”

http://kriswrites.com/2012/10/24/the...hts-reversion/

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Some older contracts that don't specify POD separately have publishers treating print on demand availability as "in print".



http://kriswrites.com/2012/10/24/the...hts-reversion/

The key to all of this is that each contract is different. There is no such thing as a standard take it or leave it contract. Being able to negotiate to get what matters to you is an important in book publishing as it is in buying a new car or a house.