Amateur To Published: The Fiction Writer's Guide To Publishing

5 - Negotiating The Best Contract For Yourself

Writing and publishing are a business. Don't go into publishing thinking that thepeople working there are trustworthy just because they have a nice office orwebsite. Not all of them are. A lot of authors get excited because a famouspress has picked their book but they end up getting screwed over because theydidn't look at their contracts carefully, or in some cases didn't even sign acontract

You need to protect yourself. This is how you do it.

STEP 1: MAKE SURE THERE IS A CONTRACT

This is an obvious step but you'd be surprised how manywriters aren't aware of it. Before you hand over your manuscript you must see acontract. The offer from the publisher should come in writing clearly settingout what you should expect from the publisher and what the publisher expectsfrom you. Each page of the contract should have a spot for you to sign so thatnothing changes in any of the pages.

Of course the expected advance and royalties are animportant part of the contract. However, don't be seduced into thinking thatthey are the only important part.There are so many more clauses that you need to be aware and careful of.

For instance, you'll need to be clear about theextent of the license, territories, subsidiary rights, when the book will bepublished, how many paperbacks you'll get, how many bookshops your book will besent to, what the marketing plan is, when you can check the accounts, reversionclause among many, many other issues.

STEP 2: FIND OUT WHAT YOU'RE LICENSING

When reading the contract, the very first thing youneed to be clear about is what is being licensed to the publisher for the legalterm of copyright. The publisher will likely want a license that grants them:

1. Volume Rights. which means all print forms of the bookincluding hardback, paperback, large print and other formats

2. Serial Rights. which means the right to serialize it inmagazines, newspapers or on online sites like Wattpad and Radish

3. EBook & Electronic Rights. which means the right to produce and sell aneBook on all retail platforms and in all forms including ePub, Mobi files, PDFetc. It can also encompass several different forms apart from straightforwardtexts. These days there are apps, enhanced eBooks that contain moving images,games based on the book etc

4. Audio Rights.  which means the right to produce and sell anaudio-book

5. Dramatic Rights. which means the right to option it as a movie,television series or even radio show

6. Merchandizing Rights. which means the right to produce and sellmerchandize related to the book including t-shirts, mugs, companion books,posters etc

7. First Rights. this means that if your book is meant to be part ofseries the publisher gets first rights to bid for future books in the seriesbefore you can shop it to other publishers.

Some publisher's contracts include all-encompassing wording such as 'allmedia forms currently in existence and hereinafter invented'. This in effecthands control to the publisher of all the above rights and more at a standardroyalty rate. It would be a mistake to sign a contract that has such a clause. That's a bad contract.

Sure, it's okay to give a publisher most if not all ofthe above rights. However, you're better off reserving those rights and havingthem handled separately and at different royalty rates so that your income rateis higher. Exercise your due diligence and find out what other authors aregetting for each license grant.

STEP 3: KNOW WHAT TERRITORIES YOU'VE GRANTED

The clause on territories states where the publisher has the right to sell or sub-license your book. US Publishers are lucky enough to have a sufficiently large home market to mean that they are not reliant on foreign sales and therefore will not always require world rights. However, if you're publishing with a company that is outside the US, there's a very good chance that they will ask for 'world rights'.