Reading a Contract
by Crawford Kilian
When you do finally receive a publisher's contract, you may feel your
heart sink. It runs to several pages of single-spaced text, highly
flavored with legalese and organized in a daunting sequence of
numbered paragraphs and subparagraphs. Who knows what thorns lurk in
such a thicket?
Actually, not too many. Most of your contract is standard
``boilerplate'' text that protects you as much as the publisher. It is
often possible, even for a novice, to negotiate specific aspects of
the contract.
Still, it helps to know what you're getting yourself into, so let us
take a look at some of the key passages you're likely to find in your
contract.
Delivery Of Satisfactory Copy
If you're selling your novel on the strength of sample chapters and an
outline, the publisher wants assurance that you'll submit the full
manuscript (often with a second copy), at an agreed-upon length, by an
agreed-upon date. If your full ms. doesn't measure up, or arrives too
late, the publisher has the right to demand return of any money you've
received.
In practice the publisher is usually much more flexible. He may bounce
your ms. back to you with a reminder that you don't get the rest of
your advance until the ms. is ``satisfactory.'' He (or more likely the
editor) will tell you in exquisite detail what you still need to do to
achieve ``satisfactory"''status. A late ms. also means you won't
collect the balance of your advance until it arrives, and it may also
cause delays in final publication--as I learned to my sorrow with
Greenmagic.
Permission for Copyrighted Material
If you want to include the lyrics of a pop song in your novel, or
quote something as an epigraph, it's up to you to obtain the rights to
such material, and to pay for them if necessary. If you leave it to
the publisher, he'll charge you; if he can't get permission, and the
novel doesn't work without such material, the deal is off and you have
to repay any advance you've received. Obviously, this is an extreme
case; normally you just drop the lines from the song or poem, and
carry on.
Grant Of Rights
You are giving the publisher the right to make copies of what you've
written. These copies may be in hardcover, softcover, audio cassette,
filmstrip, comic book, or whatever. You are also specifying in which
parts of the world the publisher may sell such copies. For example, a
sale to a British publisher may specifically exclude North America,
leaving you free to sell North American rights separately.
You may also be giving the publisher rights to sell foreign
translations, to print excerpts in other books or periodicals as a
form of advertising, or to sell copies to book clubs. Normally such
sales require your informed, written consent.
Proofreading and Author's Corrections
You agree that you will proofread the galleys or page proofs of your
novel and return the corrected pages promptly. If your corrections
amount to actual revision of the original manuscript, and will require
re-typesetting more than 10 per cent of the book, the publisher will
charge you for such costs. This can very easily destroy any income
you might have earned from the book.
Advances and Royalties
This spells out how much the publisher will pay you, and when. The
most common agreement is payment of one-third of the advance on
signing the contract; one-third on delivery of a satisfactory complete
ms.; and one-third on publication date. You may be able to negotiate
half on signing and half on delivery; otherwise, you are in effect
lending the publisher some of your advance until a publication date
that may be over a year away.
Royalties are generally a percentage of the list price of the book.
For hardcover books, the usual royalties is ten per cent of list
price. So a novel retailing for $24.95 will earn its author $2.50
per copy. For mass-market paperbacks, royalty rates can range from
four per cent to eight per cent, usually with a proviso that the rate
will go up after sale of some huge number of copies--150,000 seems
to be a popular target. A paperback selling at $5.95, with an eight
per cent royalty, will therefore earn you about 47 cents. A ``trade''
paperback, intended for sale in regular bookstores rather than
supermarkets and other mass outlets, will probably earn a comparable
rate; the list price, however, will likely be higher and the number of
copies sold will be lower.
Whatever the royalty rates, you're likely to get only half as much for
sales to book clubs or overseas markets. (This is especially painful
for Canadian authors with American publishers: sales in your own
country, as ``foreign'' sales, earn only half the U.S. royalty rate.)
You will also agree to split the take from certain kinds of licensing
sales. For example, if your novel is a hardback and some other house
wants to bring out a paperback edition, you can normally expect a 50
per cent share of what the paperback house pays. Sometimes a paperback
house will license a hardback edition (in hopes of getting more
critical attention for your book and hence selling more copies in
paperback eventually); in such a case you should expect 75 per cent of
the deal.
If you can possibly avoid it, do not agree to give your
publisher a share of any sale to movies or TV. A film or TV show based
on your novel will boost the publisher's sales quite nicely; he
doesn't need a slice off the top of a deal that will surely pay you
more than the publisher did. But if the book seems highly unlikely to
interest Hollywood, you might offer a slice of film rights in exchange
for a richer advance, with a proviso that an actual film or TV sale
will also produce an additional chunk of money from the publisher.
The publisher will normally not charge for the production of versions
of your novel in Braille or other formats for the handicapped. So you
will get no money from this source.
The publisher should agree to supply you with two royalty statements a
year. Each will cover a six-month reporting period, and each should
arrive about 90 days after the close of that period. So a statement
for January-June should reach you at the end of September. This will
probably be a computer printout, and may be confusing. But it will
indicate the number of copies shipped, the number returned unsold by
booksellers, and the number presumably sold. The publisher will hold
back on some of the royalty ``against further returns.'' Whatever
remains is the actual number on which the publisher owes you money.
Chances are that your advance will have consumed any potential
royalties for the first reporting period, and perhaps for the second
as well. Once you have ``earned out'' your advance, however, you
should expect a check with each royalty statement.
Do not sign a contract that does not explicitly promise you at
least two royalty statements a year. Some publishers promise a
statement only after the novel has earned out its advance. This means
you may go for years--or forever--without knowing what your
sales have been.
Author's Warranties and Indemnities
Here you are promising that this is indeed your work, that it isn't
obscene, a breach of privacy, libelous, or otherwise illegal. If you
do get into trouble, you agree to cooperate with the publisher's legal
defense, and you agree to pay your share of the costs instead of
asking the publisher, booksellers, or others to do so. If the
publisher's lawyer thinks the manuscript poses legal problems, you
agree to make the changes required to solve those problems--or to
allow the publisher to do so.
You may find an insurance rider as part of your contract; this is
intended to protect both you and the publisher from suffering total
financial disaster if you get caught in a losing lawsuit.
Copies to Author
You will get a certain number of free copies, and will pay a reduced
rate for more copies. That means you will still pay for those copies,
and you should.
Option Clause
Pay attention to this one! This says you are giving the publisher
right of first refusal on your next book (or at least your next book
of this particular genre). The option clause means the publisher will
give the next book a close, prompt reading. You should expect a
response within 90 days, but some contracts specify 90 days after
publication of your current book. That means you might have to wait
for months, maybe over a year, until the publisher sees the initial
reaction to your first book.
In practice, though, you probably will get a quicker response than
that. If the publisher does make you an offer, you have the right to
refuse it; you can then take your second book to any other publisher
you like. However, you can't sell it to anyone else unless you get
better terms for it than your original publisher offered.
You may well find yourself trapped as a result. If you need money in a
hurry, you may feel you've got to accept a bad offer rather than spend
months or years shopping your ms. around the market until you find a
more generous publisher. And then, of course, your second contract
will include an option clause for the third novel!
Your best hope in this case is that sales of the first book will
warrant a heftier advance on the second or third book. And if the
publisher still won't cooperate, you can then go to another publisher
with at least some respectable sales figures that show you deserve a
better deal.
Going Out of Print
Request for it to be reprinted; if he doesn't want to, you can then
demand that all rights revert to you. You are then free to sell the
book to another publisher. (I have done this a couple of times. You
don't make as much money on the resale, but at least the book stays
out on the market longer.) You may be able to acquire the plates or
film from which copies of your novel were made, making it possible for
a new publisher to bring your book out quite cheaply.
You will probably not make any money from ``remaindered'' copies that
the publisher may sell to a book jobber at a deep discount. In some
contracts, however, the author may indeed receive some percentage of
such sales. It's also possible to buy copies of your book at a similar
low price.
A Word of Advice
If at all possible, go over the contract with the editor or publisher,
asking whatever questions arise. Then take your contract to an agent,
lawyer, or professional writer. Chances are that it's perfectly okay.
But even if you don't find something sneaky in the fine print, you'll
have a clearer understanding of what you and your publisher have
committed yourselves to. If something arises later on, like a problem
over the option clause or the frequency of royalty statements, it
won't come as a total shock.
Finally, bear in mind that if you have read this far, you are
seriously interested in mastering an art and craft that rewards very
few practitioners--novices or experts. Fiction in print is still
relatively popular, but only relatively. For every reader you might
attract, TV or films or recordings attract hundreds of consumers. You
will work for months or years to create a product that is
theoretically eternal, but in practice has a shelf-life of a few
weeks. Most of your readers will, two months after reading your work,
be unable to recall anything about the story (including your
name)--maybe not even whether they liked it or not. And you will reach
more readers with a punchy, witty letter to the editor of a
metropolitan daily than you're likely to reach with your novel.
Is it worth it? Only you can answer that question. My answer has been
yes, and I don't regret it. Writing ten novels has been not only fun
but an education; I can hardly wait to find out what the eleventh
novel will teach me.
Except from "Advice on Novel Writing by Crawford Kilian."
About the Author
Crawford
Kilian was born in New York City in 1941. He moved to Canada in 1967
and now resides in Vancouver B.C. Crawford has had twelve science
fiction and fantasy novels published. He has been nominated for an
Aurora Award 3 times for his novels Eyas, Lifter and Rogue Emperor- A
Novel of the Chronoplane Wars. His latest contribution to SF is a
non-fiction book for would-be SF writers called Writing Science Fiction
and Fantasy. Crawford has two more novels in the works.
To learn more about him at Wikipedia.
Crawford Kilian Books at Amazon
