Bottom of the Food Chain

Is it any wonder that writers feel like they are at the bottom of the food chain? All they have of any value in this world is their work, and writers have--of necessity--become very protective of their work. Everyone else in the world, it sometimes seems, wants to take another slice of the pie and leave barely a crumb left for the poor starving writer.

Take, for example, electronic rights. Shouldn't writers receive fair compensation for their work when it is made available for download? Shouldn't writers be paid everytime someone downloads their work or everytime their work is included in a database? Since electronic rights were not mentioned in many older contracts, shouldn't those rights belong to the writer and not the publisher until such time as they are negotiated and the writer paid for a license? What do you think?

Rights Reversion when Title is OOP

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

SFWA Statement on Electronic Rights

Professional writers' organizations offer guidance and model contracts to author members. The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), along with The Authors Guild, has been in the forefront of monitoring unauthorized use of members' works on the web.

http://www.sfwa.org/contracts/elec.htm