 |
Here are some notes and commentary about our Standard "Rich and Famous" Contract. Please note: we are not lawyers. We are not offering legal advice. You should always seek legal advice from an attorney. You should have an attorney review the contract before you sign it. What we say here isn't legally binding—this is what we think it means, and only the contract itself is legally binding.
1.a. The term of the contract is five (5) years. We limit the term because the usual idea of "out of print" (OP) doesn't fit the idea of printing-on-demand. See §§1.e and 20 for more detail about what OP means with us.
This contract applies to paperback editions. We do not publish hardback editions.
1.b. This contract does not apply to "electronic distribution" as defined by SFFWA. While that is implicit in the contract, we thought we'd spell it out and make it plain to everyone.
1.c.ii.Note that you may sell English language rights to a publisher in the countries listed here, but the sale of those rights doesn't keep us from selling our books in those countries if we wish.
1.d.This essentially means any sale made electronically is a sale "in the USA." We wrote it this way because we can't know where someone is when they buy a book via phone or the web and so on. Reason: if you had an exclusive contract with Flabbergast Pubs to sell your book in Britain, we'd have to ask every caller or web hit "Are you in Britain? Sorry, can't sell you a book. Call Flabbergast." This section doesn't keep you from making an exclusive contract in Britain (§1.c.ii may), it only makes electronic sales OK if you do make an exclusive contract.
1.e.i.This is called "right of first refusal." Basically, if your book does well, one of The Bigs will probably want to pick it up, and they will probably offer you a hefty advance. We can't do that, but we at least want to make you an offer before you move up to The Show.
1.e.ii.This is a right of first refusal for ebooks. Before we print your book, we create an electronic file that we send to the printer. Making an ebook from that same file is pretty simple, and we don't want to lose the ebook opportunity when epaper finally becomes truly feasible. We still have to negotiate a contract with younothing is automatic about the right of first refusal.
1.e.iii.This is how long we have to make you an offer, negotiate the details, and so on. It also says we keep the right to publish your book until you tell us not to in writing.
1.e.iv.Even after you tell us in writing, we get another 90 days to sell as many books as we can. So, if you want your book back, you can have it in as few as 90 days. If you want to negotiate before you get your book back, it could take as long as five months.
2As an overview, this basically says: The author didn't violate any laws or rights on purpose; we will help if the author made a mistake. It does not say we will shoulder the burden of a plagiarism
or infringement suitour pockets aren't any deeper than yours, and our shoulders aren't any broader.
2.a.iv.The "previously unpublished" is underlined because we want to print lots of reprints of classics and too-poorly-knowns.
2.a.v.See the "public domain" part? Keeps you from repackaging someone else's out-of-copyright work as your own.
2.a.xii.Of course, if you were writing a book like The Anarchist Cookbook, we'd alter this clause and put a disclaimer in the book.
2.b.If you get whupped in court for a violation, they can't try to take our stuff away from us.
2.b.i.a&bIf we have to fend someone off because of your mistake, you have to pay for that if we tell you about it pretty quick and if we help you out.
3.a.You agree to deliver the book on time, at about the same length we discussed when we were saying we liked your book, in an an electronic form we can read.
3.c.You have to come up with any special photographs or drawings for your book, and you have to be sure you aren't violating any laws or rights when you use them.
3.d.If you don't do 3.c right, we can fix the problems and charge you for it.
3.e.You have 90 days' grace on the deadline for your book. If you still don't turn it in, we can cancel the contract. If you turn it in, but it isn't what you said you'd turn in, we can cancel the
contract.
3.f.If you turn it in, and it isn't really what we thought we would get, we can cancel the contract.
4.Overall: we have a year to publish the book after we get it in its final form (after proofing and galleys and such). We can get an extension on that for accidents or just because you are nice to us. If we still don't publish, you tell us you want the book back; as soon as you do that, we have 90 days to publish your book. If we miss the "90 day; last chance; no, really" deadline, you get your book back; keep any advances; and can't sue us.
4.e&f.It isn't a breach of contract if we don't want to publish the book because we think it will violate the law or rights. We can ask you to fix the troublesome parts, and if you won't, we can cancel the contract and ask for our money back.
4.g. We have to keep control because some authors are like people redecorating: "Put it there. A little to the left. A little more. Now right. Nope, no good. OK, let's try putting the piano where the sofa is and the sofa where the piano is. You just stand there and hold the recliner until I find a place for it." We're amenable to author input, but there comes a time when we have to say ENUF and get the book sold.
5 & 6These sections are identical except they refer to cover art and interior illustrations, respectively. Basically, it says: we send you at least three portfolios to choose from within two weeks of getting your last-last-really-last manuscript. You have 30 days to choose one of the artists or say that you want to bring in your own artist. If you miss the 30 day deadline, we make three covers and present them to you. You have another 30 days to choose among them. If you miss that deadline or we don't get along with the artist you chose, we choose the cover and give you two weeks to hack on it. If you miss that deadline, we can do what we want.
7.a.If you haven't secured a copyright for your book, we'll make sure it's all taken care of.
7.b.When the renewal comes up, it's your job to make sure it gets renewed.
7.cIf your rights are violated
i.Whoever finds out first tells the other.
ii-iii.Neither of us has to do anything about it.
iv-vi.We can file suit even if you file suit. We pay for it, we can say we are acting for you, you can join us in our suit.
7.dThe money we get from the suit pays the costs of the suit first. Whatever is left over goes to the author unless the money is a replacement of profits lost. Replacement profits are divided between the publisher and the author the same way the cover price of a book is.
8We won't change anything without your written say-so, except as noted in 7.a.
9.a.We'll send you galleys. You have 20 days to look them over and get them back to us. You can have page proofs if you ask for them. If you don't get the galleys back in 20 days, we can make the changes we think are necessary and print your book.
9.bIf you get wild with changes and corrections at this late stage, we can charge the cost of making them to you. We have to prove what you owe us. You don't have to pay to correct a mistake we introduced.
9.c.You get to approve the outsides, but you can't hold up the book for no reason at all. Compare this with §4.g.
10You can't compete with me in the territory granted to me. This doesn't cover ebooks, and we spelled that out so we don't have to argue about it. Your attorney will have to interpret the fine details of this versus what's in §1.
11.i.Nobody gets an advance. See the FAQ for an explanation.
11.ii-iii.You get a flat 10% of cover price no matter how many are sold or if it's a large print edition.
11.iv-vii.Specialty stuff about reprints, book clubs, foreign editions, overstock, and so on.
11.viii.You don't get royalties on any free copies sent to you or anyone else, and you don't get royalties if we destroy books we print.
11.b-d.These are really "for the sake of form" sections. They're about overpayment of advances; reserves for returns; remaindering; and time to remainder. Since we don't offer advances, we don't have returns, and we don't remainder, it all seems moot. The lawyer-thing said put it in, so we did.
12If we have the right to license some work of yours, we have to tell you if we do that. We have to pay you your license royalty independently of any money we might owe each other.
13Generally, this sets out the things that we can license, like excerpts, readings on the radio, and so on. This basically lets us reproduce parts of the book for marketing purposes.
14This sets out how we will split the money for licensing stuff from §13.
15 If you decide you want us to license something for you (the right to turn your book into a movie script, for instance), we get 10% of the license fee, and you get 90%.
16You keep all the rights you don't specifically grant to us but that doesn't give you the right to compete with us by reprinting your own work.
17Every six months, we send you a royalty statement and a royalty check.You can look at our accounts of your sales during normal business hours. If you find out our royalty check is wrong by more than $100 US, we pay you the money and foot the bill for finding out we were wrong. If we're wrong by less than $100 US, we pay you, and you foot the finder's bill.
18If we overpay you, we can fix it in your next royalty check. An advance isn't considered an overpayment.
19You get 10 free copies and a 30% discount after that.
20.a.Your work is in print if it's available as defined in §1.
20.b.This is a little tricky. You could have different editions of the same book in print at different publishers. If the edition we have the rights to is out of print, you can tell us you want to cancel the contract. We then have 30 days to print the old edition or say we will come out with a new edition. If we don't do either of these, the contract is canceled. If we say we will print a new edition, we have six months to do that. If we don't do it in six months, the contract is canceled. We can re-negotiate the 30 day and six month deadlines if we want to.
20.c.We can stop publishing 2 years after we begin, but not sooner. We have to give you three months notice that we want to quit. At the end of that three months, you get your book back.
20.d.If we don't send royalty statements and checks, you can withdraw your book.
20.e.If we don't abide by this contract, it's cancelled.
20.f.If this contract is terminated, you get your rights back; you get the physical properties used to make the book (photos, drawings, etc.) that belong to you; and you can buy the text file we produce your book from and any extra copies of the book (bound or unbound).
20.g.If you don't buy the stuff in §20.f., we can sell it to anyone at all, but they don't get the right to publish your book. They just buy the physical properties.
20.h.You also get the copyright assigned to you if the contract ends.
21Lawsy, I don't even want to start with this. Take it to your lawyer-thing.
22Neither of us can sign over parts of this contract to others unless we agree to it in writing except the author can have us pay royalties to someone else without getting our consent.
23If we get into an argument, this standardizes the way we will handle it. You don't have to go through arbitration if the argument is about failure to pay royalties.
24We can write each other at our "address of record," and we can change addresses by writing and saying so. Anything terminating the contract has to be sent by registered mail.
25If either of us lets the other get by with a violation of the contract, that doesn't mean it's OK to do it again or to violate the contract in a new way. If we agree to a violation, it has to be in writing and signed.
26If rights revert to you, we have to fill out all the paperwork to make them fully revert to you.
28You can assign your rights to the work to someone else. You can sell your rights to someone else. So can we.
29No changing the contract except we agree in writing and sign it.
|
|
Guidelines
