Thanks for this; it’s a concise and helpful summary that I hope I’ll be able to refer to some time in the future 
Authors being published for the first time are generally happy just to get the work out there and will accept any deal offered to them. It’s important to realize if you get a contract that includes something like work-made-for-hire, you’re loosing the right to even reuse these characters. This may not be an issue if you planned this to be a one off, but if this work is meant to be the first foray into a much larger world you’re creating, you need to review carefully on what rights the publisher is buying from you.
More information on Works-made-for-hire and how that works with US Copyright law can be found here: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
Also, copyright laws vary by country. If you’re outside of the US, you may need to do research to understand how local laws affect your situation.
And in my experience, sometimes it’s hard to know what’s just going to be a one-off and what might possibly develop into something larger later on. You might be certain you’re not going to do anything else with those characters or that world, but then years later something sparks, or you realize the short story could be expanded into a novel, or something like that.
I know Rabbit Valley’s contracts have ‘Work for Hire’ in them, but the contract also expires after 6 months for short stories, so it is less of an issue I find at that point.
One red flag is being paid off of NET PROFIT.
It can lead to what is called Hollywood Accounting, where you will see no profit from your publication. Wiki does a good job summing it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
I’ve only come across it from one publisher, and the first thing I did was contact them to get their definition of what they meant, so that if I decided to go with them, I would have documentation as to what they considered to be NET PROFIT. (in the end I decided not to go with them)
Personally, I won’t sign anything with the words work for hire involved, even if the contract expires 10 seconds after I sign it. If there’s some legit reason a publisher truly needs to use work for hire just to publish a short story in an anthology or a magazine, I have no clue what that reason might be.
Alas, due to the government shutdown, the link I posted has vanished for now. It will hopefully come back at some point.
How would work-for-hire function in a publishing contract if it expires after six months? Wouldn’t they still own the copyright after the time period is up?
I don’t know.
I’m still trying to figure out why ‘Work for Hire’ is as bad…
does some reading
According to copyright law in the United States and certain other copyright jurisdictions, if a work is “made for hire”, the employer—not the employee—is considered the legal author.
Ahh, that would make sense.
I would think that if the contract goes null after six months, so would the company’s rights to the story, reverting them back to the original author as with most writing contracts I have seen. That said, that is just an assumption on my part.
Necroing this because Odyssey’s latest podcast is on the topic of contracts:
I’m a programmer working for a large company, the third I’ve worked for in my career. All of the software I produce as part of my job is considered works for hire. There is no expectation on my part that the rights to anything I’ve written in that capacity will ever revert back to me.
There was a controversy some years ago where the major record labels pushed through a bill that redefined all recordings produced under a recording contract to be works for hire. It was repealed when the musicians protested.
If someone wanted me to write something for hire, I wouldn’t necessarily refuse it out of hand. It’s possible I’d be willing to write something, hand it off to them and collect my payment, and never again have anything to do with it. What matters is having clear expectations.
I have a question. I posted an open call, and someone told me that “authors aren’t happy with non-exclusive rights in perpetuity thereafter.” I can’t figure out what the problem is. Why would this be an issue?
I suppose you could have a case where a publisher alters or edits your work without your permission, and is then permitted to continue selling the book with those rights. As the author, you aren’t happy with the changes made, but you’re powerless to pull it from the market or alter it.
Plus most large publishers will only take exclusive contracts. If you’ve already got a non-exclusive contract with a small publisher, and that small publisher doesn’t relinquish the rights, then you can say goodbye to that big-money contract the large publisher was offering you.
Selling rights away without an expiration period is a bad idea, in my opinion.
The rights are exclusive for the first year, then non-exclusive.
The person replied that the issue is the perpetuity, which I don’t understand why that’s a sticking poitn.
Because what if the publisher doesn’t release the rights when you want/need them too? If you have a big publisher come up to you with a lovely advance payment, they will want exclusive rights. If you have a non-exclusive perpetual deal with a small publisher, then that will mean you can’t sign that exclusive deal with the big guys. If the small publisher refuses to relinquish the rights (a dick move, but they’re entitled to do that) then you lose out on a lot of money as you can’t simply wait for the rights to expire.
It’s one of the reasons why I only ever offer 18 month contracts, after which they turn into month-by-month rolling.
I think we’re probably talking about short stories for an anthology, though, which is a slightly different situation than a book. I don’t understand either why perpetuity would be a problem as long as it’s nonexclusive. You can’t expect an anthology to remove your story from the book on request the way, say, an online magazine’s archive might be able to.
Oh, ok. Fair enough. In that situation I agree, I really don’t see why it would be a problem at all.
Griefcom, the SFWA’s Grievance Committee, came up in another thread. I looked them up and found this excellent guide to not getting in hot water over contracts and rights:
Oh, I totally forgot about this thread. Thanks for the link and reviving this, Husky. Might as well post about this here!
Last year, I made an attempt at becoming a literary agent. I spent months studying and preparing, learning quite a bit about the process and, most importantly, contracts and rights. While the agent thing didn’t end up working out (mostly because I never had the time I needed to go out and look for potential markets for clients), I’ve become quite good with contracts, both reading/understanding and writing. If you ever find yourself completely stuck when it comes to a contract, I’ve recently added Contract Consulting to my list of services. If you find yourself interested, you can find details at www.anthroaquatic.com/services.html and costs at www.anthroaquatic.com/prices.html
One more thing. Because RV was mentioned in here several times, I’d like to say that, as of the time I signed the Tales from the Guild contract with them, most of the troublesome clauses listed here have been removed.
As I understand it, the standard contract for a book is that once it has been out of print for a certain number of years, the rights revert to the author.
Also, when the author dies, all rights revert to the family.
Wow. My mum’s going to be so thrilled 
Anything that relies on a book going out of print is out of date. Print on demand and e-publishing have made it possible to keep a book in print forever at almost no cost. Something to be aware of.