Getting offered a publishing deal is exciting. After months or years of writing, revising, submitting and waiting, somebody finally wants to publish your book.
Which makes this a moment where it would be extremely easy to stop thinking clearly.
The publishing contract can feel like the administrative bit standing between you and becoming a published author: check the advance, glance at the royalties, sign where indicated, open something fizzy …
Don’t.
A publishing contract determines what rights you are giving away, how long the publisher can keep them, what they have to pay you, what you have to deliver, and how you can eventually get those rights back. Those might seem like minor details, but they are the commercial terms under which your book may live for years or even decades.
And if you’re an unrepresented author, nobody else is going to check them for you.
I’ve worked with publishing contracts for around twenty years, and as an independent contracts negotiator I’ve seen agreements from a wide range of publishers. One of the first things authors need to understand is that there is no single ‘standard publishing contract’. When a publisher says its contract is standard, that generally means these are the terms this publisher normally offers. It doesn’t mean the terms are universal, non-negotiable or necessarily right for you.
So before you sign, read the whole contract — and pay particular attention to these five things.
First rule: read the whole thing. Publishing contracts are generally much less impenetrable than people imagine, and many modern agreements are written in reasonably straightforward English. If there’s something you don’t understand, ask. If there’s something you want changed, negotiate it before you sign. Afterwards is a bit late to discover what you agreed to!
The most important terms of the publishing contract
I have written in more detail about these terms elsewhere, but these are the terms you particularly need to look at:
1. Grant of Rights: what are you actually giving the publisher?
This clause, usually found at the beginning of the contract, explains which rights you are granting to the publisher. The simplest version is all publishing rights, in all languages, throughout the world, for the full term of copyright.
However, all those rights can be broken up into smaller chunks. For instance: paperback and ebook rights only, in English, in the UK and Commonwealth, for ten years. In the latter example, the author retains the other chunks of the rights, unless they have already been granted to other publishers.
More rights are not automatically better for the author. If a publisher has no realistic means of exploiting translation, audio or particular territorial rights, there may be no advantage in granting them. A smart author looks not merely at which rights the publisher wants, but why it needs them and what it intends to do with them.
2. Term: for how long are you giving those rights away?
This is the length of the contract, and may be found amongst the wording of the Grant of Rights clause, or in its own clause. This can be important – there are various reasons an author might not want to grant their rights for the full term of copyright (the author’s life plus 70 years), so if there’s a mismatch between the term the contract asks for and the term you want to grant, speak up!
A long contractual term is not necessarily disastrous if the agreement also contains a strong reversion clause. Conversely, a full-copyright grant coupled with a weak reversion provision can leave an author stuck with an inactive book for a very long time.
3. Delivery and acceptance: what exactly have you promised to deliver?
A fiction manuscript is likely to have already been delivered and accepted by the time the contract is drawn up.
With a non-fiction title, where the book may have been sold as a proposal, this clause explains when and how the manuscript must be delivered and the terms under which it will be accepted, as well as other items concerning which party will pay for permissions and when and how pictures and tables should be submitted. Again, if you won’t be able to make the deadline, best to say so as early as possible.
Pay attention not only to the delivery date but to what counts as acceptable delivery and what happens if the publisher doesn’t accept the manuscript. Particularly with non-fiction sold on proposal, the publisher needs reasonable protection if the eventual manuscript isn’t what was commissioned — but the author also needs clear, fair terms rather than an open-ended right for the publisher to reject the work.
4. Advance and royalties: how, and on what basis, will you be paid?
These are the clauses most authors will definitely look at!
An advance is a sum of money paid upfront, based on the publisher’s sales expectations, and set against the royalties. Whenever a copy of your book is sold, the royalty you would receive goes towards ‘earning out’ the advance. When the advance has earned out, royalties begin being paid.
Manage your expectations here: the kind of high advance you might read about in the newspapers is not all that common for an author who is not already famous (that’s why it is news) and such an advance can put a lot of pressure on the author to earn out.
If you are not represented by an agent, you may well be working with a publisher who offers a small advance, or no advance, which means your royalties are more important.
Don’t look only at the percentage. Look at what the percentage is calculated on. A 10% royalty sounds better than 7.5%, but it is not necessarily so if one is calculated on RRP and the other on net receipts.
If royalties are calculated on net receipts, check how the contract defines net receipts and what, if anything, the publisher is entitled to deduct before your royalty is calculated. If the agreement refers to net profit, be especially careful: the definition of allowable costs becomes extremely important.
Also look for different royalty rates for different formats and types of sale, whether the rates escalate after particular sales thresholds, how often royalty statements are issued, and when payment is due.
5. Out of print and Reversion: how do you get your book back?
This may be the clause authors are most likely to overlook when they’re excited about being published — and it’s one of the clauses they may care about most five or ten years later.
Traditionally, when a book fell out of print, the rights reverted to the author and the contract terminated. However, since the introduction of POD and ebooks, the definition of ‘out of print’ became a bit more complicated than it used to be.
A modern reversion clause should clearly specify under what circumstances the rights revert to the author. A vague clause that relies on an old definition of out of print won’t do. You want to avoid a situation where the book limps on selling a few copies a year but without a push by the publisher to revive its sales. The contract should lay out at what sales level over what period of time it becomes possible to request a reversion of the rights.
A useful modern reversion clause therefore relies on objective criteria, usually sales or revenue over a specified period, rather than simply saying that rights revert when the book is ‘out of print’. It should also explain how the author requests reversion and what happens after that request.
Yes, you can negotiate a publishing contract
Authors sometimes worry that asking for changes will make them look difficult or ungrateful. It won’t. Contract negotiation is a normal part of publishing.
That doesn’t mean every publisher will agree to every request. Some terms may genuinely be non-negotiable; others may have considerably more flexibility. The difficulty for an unrepresented author is knowing which is which.
If you’re represented by a literary agent, your agent will normally handle the contract negotiation. If you’re unrepresented, it’s sensible to get advice from someone who understands publishing contracts specifically.
I emphasise publishing contracts because familiarity with contracts in another industry isn’t necessarily enough. I’ve seen negotiations go badly wrong when a very confident lawyer or businessperson approached a publishing agreement without understanding normal publishing practice. Knowing what a clause technically means isn’t the same thing as knowing what’s customary, what’s unusual and what a publisher might realistically agree to change.
One way to approach negotiating your contract is to contact an author’s organisation, such as the Society of Authors, who will advise on the terms of your contract. However, if you want someone to also negotiate on your behalf (and that is a good way to keep emotion out of the negotiation and keep the relationship between author and publisher sweet) you can hire an independent contract negotiator like me, or a lawyer who specialises in intellectual property and/or publishing law, as they will have the requisite familiarity with publishing contracts.
Want to understand publishing contracts before you have one in front of you?
I’m currently developing Contracts 101 for Authors, a one-hour introduction to the fundamentals of publishing contracts: how publishing rights work, the clauses you need to understand, how advances and royalties are calculated, what ‘standard terms’ really means, and what to look for before you sign.
It isn’t a substitute for advice on a specific contract. The aim is to make sure that when a publishing deal arrives, the document in front of you doesn’t look like an entirely foreign language.
Join my mailing list for details
Getting the deal isn’t the end of the decision-making
Being offered a publishing contract is a considerable achievement, and you should absolutely celebrate it.
Just don’t let the excitement persuade you that the important decisions are over.
A good publishing deal isn’t simply one in which a publisher agrees to publish your book. It’s one in which you understand what you’ve agreed to, are comfortable with the rights you’ve granted and the money you’ll receive, and know what happens to those rights in the future.
Read it. Question it. Negotiate it. Then open something fizzy.
If you have a publishing contract you’d like independently reviewed or negotiated, I offer publishing contract consultation and negotiation. And if you’d simply like to understand publishing contracts better before that happy day arrives, Contracts 101 for Authors is on the way.
FAQ
What should an author look for in a publishing contract? At minimum, check the grant of rights, the term of the agreement, delivery and acceptance terms, the advance and royalty provisions, and the circumstances in which your rights revert to you. These clauses determine what you are giving the publisher, for how long, how and when you will be paid, and how you can eventually get your rights back.
Can an author negotiate a publishing contract?
Yes. Publishing contracts are negotiable, although how much flexibility exists varies between publishers and between individual clauses.
What does ‘standard publishing contract’ mean?
Usually, it means the publisher’s standard starting terms. It does not mean there is one standard contract used throughout the publishing industry or that every clause is non-negotiable.
Should an author get legal advice before signing a publishing contract?
An unrepresented author should seriously consider specialist advice. The important thing is to use someone familiar with publishing contracts and industry practice, whether that’s an authors’ organisation, specialist publishing lawyer or experienced publishing contracts consultant.
