One of the traditional clauses in better fiction publishing contracts was the rights revision clause. All rights, including the rights assigned under this contract, revert to the author if the title is allowed to go out of print (unavailable by conventional means from the publisher and in bookstores) for more than 6 months. The author is required to send a certified letter to the publisher's legal department asking the publsiher to reprint the work or allow the rights to revert to the author. Sometimes the publisher would send the author copies of recent invoices to bookstores to prove the book was still in print (and then the author could make note of that for the next expected royalty statement and make certain he was paid for the sales). Today, however, pubishers claim the book is still in print when electronic copies are offered through the publisher's web site or print on demand copies are available. One publisher can easily tie up a title and keep sales to a bare minimum for decades, should the publisher decide to do so. Authors must monitor their contracts to ensure they are not vulnerable to being buried in electronic graveyards where their works barely sell but the rights are still controlled by that publsiher. All contracts should also have a reasonable expiration date (8 years after first publication, for example) when the rights can be renegotiated or offered to another publisher.
http://www.sfwa.org/contracts/intropubcontracts5521.pdf
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Thanks for this nice summary of what authors can do to protect ownership of their works after a book is out of print. I also appreciate your clear discussion of why the digital age makes this process more difficult for the author. Seems like authors and libraries both need to pay close attention to contracts they have with publishers, regardless of the content (book, database, etc.), but especially when that content is shared electronically.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't so bad in the good old days of the "gentleman" publishers like Bennett Cerf (Random House), Knopf, Charles Scribners and sons, etc., when many contracts were done with a handshake and a letter of agreement. But after the conglomerates started to buy up publishing houses as investments, corporate legal departments began looking for ways to maximize profits for the corporation without regard for the authors. In the numbers games of corporate bean counters, writers are a dime a dozen. If writers want to be published, they have to accept the terms offered by publishers in boilerplate contracts.
ReplyDeleteOf course, publishing on demand can be a whole new ballgame. Writers can self-publish their own work and distribute through Ingram, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.com. Writers still have a difficult time getting their self-published work into bookstores because bookstores ask for credit, 40 to 50 % discounts, and full return privileges. But writers can sell their own work from their websites and circumvent bookstores. The whole system is changing. The old industrial players are going out of business and new corporate monopolies are rising. We live in interesting times.
ReplyDeleteYes, we do. I'm excited for the authors that the times are changing for them. Sometimes I am technology-phobic, but the world wide web has certainly opened up opportunities to people, including authors who now have the capability to self-publish and publish-on-demand.
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