The career novelist

16

CHAPTER

Contracts and Income

CONTRACT HOT SPOTS
IT WOULD TAKE MORE THAN ONE CHAPTER TO EXPLAIN THE
intricacies of a publishing contract. Luckily, there are a number of
excellent books out there that are wholly devoted to this subject.
Career novelists should seek them out and read them. Contracts
matter. Be sure you understand the fine print, for if you do not you
may inadvertently sign away pieces of your future.
Happily, what I can do here is alert authors to some of the hottest
points of contention in contract negotiations in the nineties. One of
the hottest, as you may already know, is the scope and control of
electronic rights. Indeed, this subject is so controversial and com-
plicated I will devote the entire next chapter to it. Meanwhile, here
are a few other hot spots:
Termination. About the last thing one thinks about when signing a
book contract is the eventual end of that book's life. Nevertheless,
it is a topic about which authors should be concerned.
With publishers reluctant to do reissues these days, it may seem
that getting your rights back once your novel has gone out of print
is not an urgent matter. But it is. Think of it this way: if your car dies
by the side of the highway, you quickly get it towed. You keep con-
trol of it even though it is not running.
The same principle applies to novels. While you may not be able
to convince another North American publisher to reissue, rights