Advice on book contracts

[Sarah Shreeves]

Hi all -

I'm having an increasing number of graduate students and faculty come to me seeking advice on what to look for in contracts for books and edited books. I provide this kind of consulting regularly for journal copyright transfer and license agreements (at a fairly high level given the legal issues), but I don't have as much experience with the issues to look for within book contracts. I feel like there's a generally understood set of issues related to journal agreements, but not for books - at least not discussed within the library community.

I thought I'd ask this community since many are focused on book publishing. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Sarah

[Dorothea Salo]

Agree that additional information on this, tailored to an academic
context, would be highly useful. One info source: I'm perhaps too fond
of the (currently fallow) Rights of Writers blog,
http://www.rightsofwriters.com/ .

Dorothea

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Dorothea Salo                sa...@wisc.edu

[Chris Aldrich]

I’ve done a bit of book representation over the years, but some of the peculiarities will depend on what types of books they’re approaching you about and what their particular desires are for the future of their book publishing careers.

 

Typically if they’ve been approached directly by a publisher and have been given a “standard” contract, then everything in it is very heavily negotiable and they really should retain either an agent or attorney who specializes in this type of work, otherwise, in my experience, they typically sign the dummy contract and end up with a scant fraction of what they should get. This can be particularly onerous as the publishing business is shifting heavily now and having a reversion of rights in the future can be very beneficial. They also generally forego their right to shop the work around to others which can be difficult for a first time writer to do.

 

If they’re highly motivated to create a career in publishing at this level, I’d generally recommend getting an agent, which isn’t too difficult since the agent won’t really have to “sell” their first work, and will only need to negotiate the deal on their behalf.  (In cases like these, I’d recommend that they have the agent cut their agency fee in half for the limited amount of work involved.) Building a relationship like this is always much easier than seeking out representation since they’ll have an immediate track record for at least the one sale.

 

If they’re reticent to pay a full agent fee and this may be their only publishing foray, then retaining an attorney (typically 5% of sale) can be very worthwhile, simple and straightforward.  At minimum you want an IP or entertainment-related attorney, but preferably one with experience in the publishing arena. 

 

There are dozens of easily found worthwhile references for hunting down agents and attorneys (keeping in mind that you’d prefer to have one who specializes in their particular niche of writing/work).  Generally I recommend people stay away from reading some of the cruft online about intellectual property rights as this generally only inflames issues in much contract work which really isn’t relevant and which most publishers are loathe to paper anyway (and particularly so for more academic related works) and won’t directly affect their outcome at all.

 

Often simply having a competent/known agent/attorney will result in the publisher dumping their “dummy contract” for something twice as good without needing to negotiate at all.

 

Keep in mind that though they may have an offer from one publisher, it certainly doesn’t prevent them from shopping their work around to others or even deciding to retain their own publicist, typesetter, etc. and self-publishing or even electronic publishing which can in many cases be more lucrative these days.

[Mike Furlough]

Chris and Lisa raise some good points about the complexity of book contracts.  For publishers, an individual book represents a greater investment/potential value than a single article does for a journal, so the negotiations are going to be more complex and more rigid in their terms.

 

However, is it realistic to expect that a grad student or junior faculty member is going to be able to find an agent to negotiate their first book deal with an academic press? The big issue may be that there will be little income to pay the agent or representative.  The likelihood of significant royalties will be slim for many titles (plus the author might be asked to waive them). For textbooks and a subset of academic topics the sales prospects are better, but wouldn't guess that is the majority of our potential clients in libraries.

 

I also don't think it's realistic that most of us can advise in detail on book contracts, but I think we’ll still find ourselves with the question from time to time.  So how might we familiarize ourselves with them?

 

 

Mike 

[Sarah Shreeves]

Thanks, Mike. The scenario that you describe - a graduate student or junior faculty member who is unlikely to find an agent who wants some general advice on issues to think about or look for - is exactly what we have been increasingly faced with.

Again, I don't give specific advice even on journal agreements, but generally ask authors what types of things they'd like to be able to do with or be able to control about their work to help them think through what they might want to negotiate. I will also provide some general outlines of the types of things that they might find in copyright transfer agreements. I know that this is more difficult and more complicated with book contracts, but it would be great to be able to list in general terms the types of issues that an author should be thinking about with a book contract.

Thanks!

Sarah

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Sarah L. Shreeves
IDEALS Coordinator
Scholarly Commons Coordinator
University Library
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://www.ideals.illinois.edu/