Our Book Contract Explained

Draft contract with expanded text explaining our reasons for writing it this way.

This agreement between New Deal Press, Inc (Publisher) and ___________ (Author) is for an original work (Work) tentatively titled ____________ to be published by New Deal Press, Inc..

Grant of Rights

The Author grants the publisher the exclusive right to publish the Work as a printed book, in electronic form on the Internet, audio, and any other media. The Publisher may license this right to others for as long as the copyright is in force, subject to the Author's approval. The Publisher will have the right to freely edit excerpts of the work for Internet publication and promotion without Author review.

All trade publishers (vs. subsidy publishers) require exclusive publication rights. Why is this? We will be investing money and time in the publication of your book, and as a business, our goal is to earn that investment back, and then some. If we allowed you to resell the rights to other publishers or back out of the deal at your convenience, we would lose our shirts.

Author's Warranty

The Author warrantees that the Work is entirely original and is wholly owned by the Author, except for parts take from sources for which the Author has obtained written permission. Any such permissions shall be submitted to the Publisher with the work. The Author warrants that the work does not contain libel or defamation, falsified information or private information the author has no right to make public. In case of lawsuit, the Publisher will defend or settle in accordance with advice of legal council, and any expenses due to the Author's breach of this warranty will be born by the Author.

If you've stolen parts of your book somewhere, deceive us, and we publish it, we are going to get sued. When we get sued, you get sued. Even if we don't get sued, if we find out you've been stealing, all bets are off. There's no room for plagiarism in the publishing industry, try academia if you must.

Book Description

The contract will be offered only when a complete manuscript is received and approved for the publication process. The manuscript will be delivered as a Microsoft Word file.

In most book contracts, this is a rather long clause describing the number of words, pictures, physical form, etc. Since we will acquire only finished works, a description is redundant.

Viability and Publication Delay

We need time to design, edit and proofread your book. Depending on the schedules of our outside contractors, we may get the job done in appreciably less than three months, but if we go over three months, you can reclaim your work and go elsewhere if you desire. We make no guarantees as to when your book will be available through distribution or on sale at Amazon or Barnes&Noble.com, these factors are not entirely in our control.

Competing Works

The Author shall not create or allow to be published another work by the Author that competes directly with the Work covered in this contract. The Publisher shall not publish a work by another author that competes directly with the Work covered by this contract while the contract is in force. Any questions not resolved between the Publisher and Author will be settled by arbitration in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

If we publish your book titled "Investing in High Tech Stocks" and you turn around and have "Investing in Computer and Bio-Tech Stocks" published by another publisher, we are going to be very upset and may take you to court for damages. If we publish your book titles "Investing in High Tech Stocks" and you have "Investing in Restaurant and Hotel Stocks" published by another publisher, we'll be happy for you. It's the grey area in between where we can't agree on what "competes directly" means that may require arbitration.

The publisher will register a copyright the Work in the name of the Author.

Manuscript Preparation

The Work will be edited by the Publisher to prepare it for publication, and the Author will have the opportunity to review and comment upon these edits. The Author will fully respond to any requests for review within 7 days of receiving the materials. The Publisher will give due consideration to any Author feedback but will not be bound by it.

We certainly want all books to be as error-free and well written as we can get them. However, it's a business, and some authors aren't very practical about schedules and costs. We'll genuinely listen if you have problems with our editing, book design, etc, but we're unlikely to make many changes unless we believe it effects the accuracy or the marketability of the book.

Royalties

The Author will receive 50% of the Publisher's net profit from all forms of publication of the Work, including books, e-books and website revenues directly attributed to the Work. Net profit is be defined for printed books as the price the Publisher receives for the book, minus printing cost, shipping and handling costs, fees and returns. Royalties will be paid on a quarterly basis, based on the actual net income from the Work to the Publisher in the previous three full months. Royalties will be paid on the February 15th, May 15th, August 15th and November 15th. The cover price will be determined by the Publisher and is subject to change if the Publisher determines market conditions warrant a new price.

Unless your book leaves the gate like a racehorse, you're unlikely to see any royalties the first quarter after it appears in print as we recoup the advance. If you don't see royalties by the 2nd quarter, we're probably in trouble. If you don't see royalties by the 3rd quarter, we're losing money rapidly, and will probably never get it back. While our publishing technologies are geared to a slow build, such that most titles should sell more the second and third years than the first, we don't pay big advances, so the book will pay out or fail in the first year.

Advance

The publisher will pay an advance of ______ on contract signing. This advance payment will be deducted from author royalties.

The advance payment will be affected by the condition of the manuscript, and most advance will probably be at our starting point of $500.00. (That's Five Hundred Dollars for people who read with their hearts rather than their eyes:-) If a manuscript is in such phenomenal condition that it doesn't need any editing, the money that would otherwise go to a outside editor may be added to the advance.

All new books will be published as non-returnable, though we may change this policy for individual titles as time goes on. This is in part to protect us from authors whose crazed mothers think they are doing no harm by calling every bookstore in the country and ordering a copy.

Author's Copies

The Author will receive 10 copies of the book after publication. The Author may purchase copies for resale in any quantity greater than 10 copies on a pre-paid basis, at the printing cost plus the Publisher's usual royalty share on books sold through distribution, plus half of the cost UPS ground shipping for the books. In most cases, this will result in a price to the Author of less than half the cover price. The Author will receive no royalties on copies purchased by or provided free to the Author.

If you want to sell books at a reading, through your local store, any place you want, that's fine by us, but we're taking our cut off the top.

Revised Editions

The Publisher will have the right to request a revised edition of the book from the Author. If the Author is not available or does not wish to revise the book, the Publisher may undertake to prepare and publish a revision. Expenses from preparing the new edition will be deducted from any royalties earned by the new edition owed to the Author or Author's estate.

If you write a book titled "The 10 Best Places in America to Buy a Home" and it's successful, we will have the right to ask for a new edition when we feel the market warrants it. If you don't want to do the update, we may choose to have somebody else do it, and deduct their charges from your share.

Sale of Rights

The Publisher may sell rights to the Work to other parties, and the net profit from any rights sale will be evenly divided between the Publisher and Author. Rights sales will occur only with the written approval of the author, since they will impact the reversion of rights if the Publisher ceases publication.

In some cases, rights sales may be an easy way to earn some extra cash, but we aren't going to sell the rights to a third party without your permission.

Reversion of Rights

The book will be deemed out of print and all rights will revert to the Author on the authors written request following any 12 month period (four consecutive royalty reports) in which the Author earns less than $1000.00 in royalties after publication of the book. Any advance payment to the Author is counted as earnings in the first 12 months after publication.

Most publishers have very obscure or complicated out-of-print clauses in their contracts, and in many cases, if the author requests reversion of rights, the publisher can foil the request by making a few copies available for sale. We don't want the overhead of carrying a bunch of titles that don't sell. If your book doesn't earn both you and us $1,000.00 (again, One Thousand Dollars) in any 12 month period (four consecutive quarters) after publication, you send us a letter within the following three months requesting rights reversion and the book is all yours again.

Contract Termination

The Publisher may choose at any time to withdraw the Work from publication in all forms, at which point the Publisher will notify the author and the Author will regain all rights to the work not sold to third parties.

Unfortunately, some authors engage in unethical behavior in attempts to raise their book sales. This can consist of false ordering, illegitimate means of steering Internet traffic, massive junk mail campaigns or out-and-out deceptive sales practices. We reserve the right to toss you overboard if any of the things occur, or if we otherwise find you too difficult to work with to be worthwhile.

Legal

This agreement is subject to the laws of Massachusetts pertaining to contracts.

If we have and contract related disputes, you're going to have to come to Massachusetts. Why on earth would we want to travel wherever you are?

(Note, my lawyer has since pointed out that the statement "This agreement is subject to the laws of Massachusetts pertaining to contracts" in and of itself wouldn't prevent an author from another state starting a court action in that state.)

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Publisher Managing Editor

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