When I first sold Otters In Space to FurPlanet, I still hoped that I’d eventually get noticed by a bigger publisher. Over the last few years, I’ve stopped hoping that. I’m happy with FurPlanet, and that’s in no small part because they have an amazingly author friendly contract. Right now, even if I were offered a deal by a big publisher, I’m not at all convinced I’d be willing to sign the contract – because, as far as I can tell, most contracts with big publishers are shockingly behind the times.
Here’s an announcement from the Authors Guild about how they’re starting an initiative to “restore balance to the author-publisher relationship”:
And here’s the pdf that goes over more of the details: https://www.authorsguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fair-Contract-Initiative_mission_Final_6.pdf
Here are some of the major problems with current standard contracts that they’re planning to wrestle with:
[ul][li] In exchange for some money, you give the publisher all rights to your book for 35 years — or your lifetime plus 70 years (let’s just call it “forever”) if you or your heirs forget to terminate after those first 35. [/li][li] The publisher gets to reject your manuscript for any reason or no reason, and if that happens, you have to give back all the money you’ve received before you can publish the book with somebody else.[/li]
[li] The publisher can publish your book when the company gets around to it, which may take as long as two years from the time it accepts your manuscript—or even longer. You have no control, and you may have to wait for the last part of your “advance” until the book finally appears in print. [/li]
[li] If you are even one day late delivering the work (time is of the essence, it seems, only when it comes to the author), the publisher can opt to terminate the agreement and ask for the advance back.[/li]
[li] You can’t publish another book under your name or even a pseudonym anywhere in the world until this one is published—even if the publisher has put it off. [/li]
[li] You have to offer the publisher the rights to your next book, but the publisher can wait to decide whether to offer you a deal on it until two months after this one comes out. [/li]
[li] You have no say in what the cover, jacket flap, and ad copy will look like.[/li]
[li] If the publisher does anything you don’t happen to like, such as assign you an incompetent editor, fail to exploit subsidiary and foreign rights, print too few copies to satisfy customer demand, forget to register your copyright, consistently forget to pay you on time, or go bankrupt, you have no real recourse.[/li][/ul]