Category Archives: author resources

Managing A Big List – 2

Posted on by under author resources, Indie Publishing

This spreadsheet tracks All. The. Things. I’ve used a variation of it for a while, then attended a workshop by Carrie Ann Ryan that added additional possibilities. (She calls hers a “swipe list”, because she can copy and paste the information she needs from it for marketing campaigns. I use mine more for metadata.) The concept is that everything you need to know about every book in your list is in one spreadsheet. Yes, it gets to be a big workbook, but it’s so very VERY useful.

This tool will be infinitely easier to build if you start when you publish your first book. I’m ready to guess, though, that most of you didn’t 🙂 and that, like me, you’re doing some backtracking to fill it all in.

So, what will you track here and how?

Create a new workbook and call it something that makes sense to you. MyBooks_2021 works for me. I set mine up that each series is on one sheet, but you can give each book its own sheet if you like. My workbook has twenty tabs and anywhere from two to six books on each page. There are about 200 lines on the sheets that have been completely filled out, like the Jewels of Kinfairlie, although some of them are blank to make it easier to read. It contains a lot of data!

I made Column B and onward wider. Starting in Column B, list the titles of all the books in the series across the top. You can also add a column for the series information and links.

In Column A, list the items included. My first item is the website url for the book’s landing page on my website. If you use shortened urls, you can include them here, or you can include both the long and short urls. (Give them separate lines.) Below that are the links for that book at the major portals: Amazon.com, Apple, GooglePlay, Nook, Kobo, etc. I also break out the identifier for the portal (like the ASIN and the Apple ID) on its own line because sometimes that’s all I need for the form at a promotional portal. I track the book link at promotion sites, like GoodReads and BookBub, and also include the ISBN for the ebook.

All the Things metadata spreadsheet by Deborah Cooke

Below the ebook details, I track the print editions of the book the same way. In this case, it’s a trade paperback POD. If there are more print editions, I track them below.

Below that and a horizontal line are the tropes for the book, and then the keywords. It’s really handy to have this at your fingertips when uploading books. (I find this invaluable for translations, too.)

Below another horizontal line are the BISAC codes for the book, as well as the BIC, WISneu and CLIL codes. When BISAC updates their listings, I can see pretty quickly what books will need their metadata updated.

Next are review quotes for the book in question, all ready to cut and paste. If the book has any credentials (USAToday Bestseller, industry award, etc.) I list that, too.

All the things metadata spreadsheet #2 by Deborah Cooke

Below another horizontal line is the tagline, then the book copy.

Below another horizontal line are the slogans and hooks I’ve used successfully in marketing the book. I have such a hard time with those one sentence (or 50 character) summaries, so once I work one out, I want to save it.

Below another horizontal line are the other formats for the book, including audio and translations. This varies by series and by brand for me. These are some of the translations for The Beauty Bride that are currently available (the list goes on!). Remember to add these ISBN#s as alternate versions at GooglePlay.

All the things metadata spreadsheet by Deborah Cooke

One of the rows I need to add to the German section is the link for LovelyBooks, which is a German reader site.

Every one of my series has its own sheet in this workbook. You can see the tabs across the bottom of the workbook.

All the things metadata spreadsheet by Deborah Cooke

I set up the first page without titles then copied and pasted Column A on each new sheet I added. Once I had all the pages, then I started to fill everything in. It takes a while and I have older series that aren’t updated on my spreadsheet yet. All the more reason to start early!

You can use this compilation for any updates that you do – I created it initially as a reference for updating my website when I changed to a new template. It’s great when I upload books, when I book promotions and when I schedule posts on my Facebook pages. I also have details at my fingertips when I get a new translation. It’s a lot of work to compile, but I use mine all the time.

Start with your bestselling series first and see whether you find it useful, too.

Managing A Big List – 1

Posted on by under author resources, Indie Publishing

One of the tasks that becomes increasingly more time-consuming as an indie author publishes more books is managing his or her backlist. Today, we’ll talk about tracking the ebook files that reside at the various portals. Books might require corrections or new information – like the addition of new titles to the series – or they might have new covers or changes to the front or end matter. A newsletter link or website url might need to be changed or updated. A new version of the book might be available (like audio) and you might want the link in the ebook. All of these options require the files to be uploaded to the portals again. Some authors update their ebook files on a regular schedule. I’m not nearly that organized anymore: I tend to update all books in a series when there’s a new release in that series. I try to update the end matter in completed series every one to two years. That’s a slippery objective which doesn’t always happen.

One thing I do is track my uploads and (you guessed it) I use a spreadsheet.

No matter how you generate your ebook files, it’s good to practice version control. This means that when you update the file, it has some info in its name to identify which version of the book it is. The easiest way to do this, IMO, is to add the date to the file name. I use Vellum to generate my ebook files, and it does not show the version automatically in the name. Once the files have been generated, I change the file names like this:

Just_One_Silver_Fox_Kindle_July2021.epub

Vellum generated this file name without the date and I added the part in bold. (And yes, I create portal-specific editions with my English books, and yes, I upload an epub to Amazon. If you want to learn more about that, check out this blog post from Vellum.)

Some of the portals will preserve the file name, so that when you look at the book’s metadata on your dashboard, you can see it. Others don’t – GooglePlay, for example, always changes the file name to the ISBN, although it does list the upload date.

When you upload a new version of a book file, it will be handled differently at different portals. All portals will deliver the current book file for new purchases. Some portals will push out the updated version to existing customers or (Apple) offer them the choice of updating their version. Amazon defaults to not delivering the new version to existing customers. You can ask them to push out the new version to all customers, but they may not agree to do as much. There’s only a chance of their agreement if the new file is 10% different from the old file or more. This can be frustrating if you’re only uploading a new version because you received a quality warning from Amazon about half a dozen typos: while fixing them isn’t perceived as a major update or one worth delivering to readers, that quality flag could result in the book being removed from sale if left unaddressed. The other wrinkle is Kindle Unlimited – when a KU reader adds a book to their library, I’m not sure the version can ever be updated.

To keep track of uploads without needing to click into the metadata for each book on each dashboard, I have a spreadsheet. To create a similar one, create a new workbook. You can call it Uploads or EbookVersions or something that makes sense to you. Add the year to the file name.

Call Column A “Title”. Make that column as wide as necessary to display your titles completely. Then, across the top and starting with Column B, name the columns with all the portals you use. I put the ebook portals first, then the aggregators. I have a column for BookFunnel, so I know the date of the version loaded there. It’s often an ARC, so having the date here is a good reminder to update it whenever I’m going to sell directly or give a book away in a BF promo. Last, but not least, I list the portals that serialize fiction, mostly because these are newer to me. List the portals in an order that makes sense to you.

I have a vertical line before the POD portals. In that section, I track the covers separately from the book interiors, so each format at each portal has two columns. I list all the various format options there, too, since many of my books are available in multiple print formats.

After another vertical line, I list the audio editions of the books. ACX is first, then Findaway Voices, then KOBO and BookFunnel – because I upload my non-exclusive audio at those portals.

There may be other outlets that make sense for you to add. If you have a Patreon and provide content there, for example, it might make sense to list it there.

Then, fill Column A with the titles of your books. I list them by author brand (which is sub-genre) and by series. Add horizontal dividing lines where it makes sense to you. I have them between author brands, then to delineate translations – which are listed by language.

Once you have all the books and portals listed, you can start to fill the form.

Here’s a peek at the top of mine:

Deborah Cooke's spreadsheet for tracking ebook version uploads

Just looking at these dates makes me want to update all of those files! (Although actually, this is the 2020 spreadsheet and most of these files have been updated this year.)

Whenever I know that a specific version needs to be updated, I use the highlight option and make that cell highlighter yellow. That way, I won’t forget to go back and update it. This can happen if I’m uploading a new version and one of the portals is having server issues. (That happens more often than might be ideal.) The yellow cell reminds me that I haven’t done that bit yet. You can add extra fields or columns for things that you tend to forget. I have a price column, for example, because I sometimes change prices at the end of the year, up or down, and this column reminds me to do every book at every portal.

Overdrive has a column because I used to upload directly to that portal. Now I use Draft2Digital to deliver to them, which is why it says “via D2D” in that column. I could remove it completely now, but it lingered while I made sure I changed the distribution on every single book. If you could see way over to the right, I have a similar column for NookPress POD’s – I had uploaded a few there, but now the bulk of those files get to B&N from Ingrams. The POD’s are available for sale at B&N but they go “via Ingrams”. This year, I decided to use D2D for distribution of all my translations (part of my ongoing quest to simplify) so there are a lot of “via D2D” entries further down the spreadsheet.

Since you’re going to fill dates into the spreadsheet, this can also be a good way to track exclusivity. I tend to take my audiobooks out of exclusivity after a year at ACX. This way, I can see the publication dates on them at a glance. Similarly, I have a column for KU in my Amazon section where I can list the date a book will finish its current term in KU. You see there’s a column for removing the books from wide distribution, too, as that can take some time before the KU enrollment. My translations that are published through Babelcube are licensed there for five years. There are a lot of reasons why you might want to know the date a book was uploaded.

Although this is a perpetual spreadsheet, I do create a duplicate each January and rename it with the current year. That way, I have an archival version in my files. That can be helpful for looking at the timing of previous enrollments in Kindle Unlimited or past pricing strategies.

Next time, we’ll talk about another handy spreadsheet to keep updated on your desktop. Happy publishing!

Building a World Guide

Posted on by under author resources, Writing

This past week, I’ve been talking in my reader group on Facebook about keeping track of fictional worlds. Since compiling the world guide for Dragonfire – which was a seemingly endless job – I knew I needed a better system. I’ve been using a new tool this past year, mostly for DragonFate, and am pleased with it. Since people were interested, I thought I’d share that here, as well.

I’ve tried a lot of methods for keeping track of my worldbuilding and character lists. The tried and true is a stack of index cards. Each character gets a card with his or her pertinent details. Locations that recur get a card, again with any mentioned details. I still use index cards for Flatiron Five Fitness and Flatiron Five Tattoo. I use a highlighter to mark the side of each card with that character or place’s first appearance in the series. (The index cards are lined. On the right edge, I colour between the first and second line for anything in book one. Between the second and third line means that element or character is introduced in book two, etc.) This means I can easily grab all pertinent cards, and also helps me find the first written description of any given element in the book manuscript.

This works well for contemporary romances but I find that paranormal romances have too many elements. This index card system gets overwhelmed quickly and doesn’t offer me enough ways to search for details.

I’ve tried other systems like Scrivener but have settled on this one, called Plottr, for the moment. I don’t want to create in the software, as I’m perfectly happy to use Word for that — actually, I’d be happy with a typewriter or writing longhand. I prefer as little interference from tech as possible when I’m writing.

Plottr is intended for plotting a new work, but I don’t plot in such detail in advance. I use it as a worldguide. I compile the timeline for each book after it’s written. This is kind of backwards, but it works for me. Let’s have a look.

Here’s the series page from Plottr for DragonFate. I need to update the covers since the second two now have gold type instead of grey, but here you can see the series at a glance. Each book has its own detail page but I like being able to see the series. (And yes, there are more books below this, but you can’t see them yet!)

The DragonFate Novels tracked in Plottr by Deborah Cooke

Here’s the plotting page for Dragon’s Mate.

Dragon's Mate by Deborah Cooke, timeline in Plottr compiled by Deborah Cooke

The timeline is a grid, almost like a spreadsheet. You can add as many columns to the right as you want and as many rows at the bottom as you like. The default is for each column to be a chapter, and the scenes to cascade below that, presumably in order. I have more than one plotline in the series, and want to track them in order of events. I also don’t plot by chapter. There are a number of templates included in the software for plotting, but for me this is more about tracking the series once each book is written than plotting in advance.

The timeline is more important to me, so I put it in the top line. The chapter line is a reference to the book manuscript, in case I want to double check any detail. The green line is the main plot: in this case, Hadrian and Rania’s firestorm and romance. There are two longer slow-burn story arcs in this series, and they’re tracked below: Sebastian and Sylvia, then Theo and Mel. There are a lot of magickal elements and items in this series and I track them on the next line. Finally, I track mentions of the rest of the Pyr. (Ignore that box with the dotted outline on the last line: it thought I wanted to add an item when I was taking the screen shot.)

Each box is a scene, and I list them in order from left to right. I end up with 70 columns or so for each book, but I can find anything later and quickly.

If I click on one of those scenes, like the very first Fae Attack, that opens a detail card:

Opening scene of Dragon's Mate by Deborah Cooke in Plottr

Here I can add a more detailed description of events, plus I can choose the characters in the scene from my character list, and choose the location from my list of places. This means that later, I can filter the timeline by character or location. This is hugely useful when cross-checking what secondary characters have witnessed or heard. (I don’t use the tags as yet.)

Of course, I can look at characters or places and get a similar card for details. Here’s the card for Arach.

Arach Knights, one of the Pyr in DragonFate by Deborah Cooke, tracked in Plottr

The character list is sorted into groups – this is the list of main characters, but there are secondary and other characters. I’ve added a field for “kind” so I can keep track of my shifters. On the Character page, I can filter by kind or by specific words, which helps me track (for example) the selkies that I’ve specifically named already in the series. I put unnamed characters here as well – “Nameless Wolf Shifter” – and they often get names later.

I like the sort and filter functions. If I forget the names of Rania’s twelve brothers, for example, I can just sort by name and scroll down to “Rania’s brother”.

Rania's brothers in Dragon's Mate by Deborah Cooke, documented in Plottr

There are other options to display your plot as well. I use the timeline, but here’s the outline that can be compiled from the timeline.

Dragon's Mate by Deborah Cooke outlined in Plottr.

The colored boxes indicate which storyline the scene is from.

You can see on the menu bar that there’s a display for Places, which is similar to the one for Characters that I showed you above with Arach’s listing.

Bones from the DragonFate novels by Deborah Cooke, documented in the places list in Plottr

In my version of the software (which is older) the book list isn’t automatically populated for each location. It seems this feature could be easily added and it may have been since I updated my version.

When I set up a new book in Plottr, the next one in the series, I copy the plotlines – they’re the same for each book. In the first column, I list the outstanding items or status of each and also the goal for that line in the next book. So for the next book on the Magick line, I’ve noted that the gem of the hoard is destroyed and that Maeve is a lizard, Fae is no longer a separate realm, the Fae weapons that slice between realms are destroyed, and the Regalian magick is gone. One question is how earth magick has reasserted itself. Another is what happened to Bryant. A third is what happened to the earth magick charms mentioned in Dragon’s Heart that were given to species of Others. And on and on. This will be modified when the book is done and I create the final timeline for it, but gives me a snapshot of what I need to address (or can consider) in the next book.

One of the great things is that as I move deeper into the series I can easily locate all previous mentions of the two longer arc stories. I’m compiling a timeline for Sylvia and Sebastian, for example, which includes all mentions of their interactions so far – and the gaps – with dates and locations. That will make it easier for me to see where I can fill gaps and list questions that are outstanding. I’ll do the same for Mel and Theo, as well.

Plottr also has an export function to Word which I haven’t tried yet. That would make it simpler to compile an actual world guide when that time comes.

I’m sure that I’m only using a small percentage of this software’s capabilities, but it’s working well for me. I find that many applications are almost overwhelming and tend to focus on what I need to get done instead of exploring all the options. Because it is essentially a spreadsheet, this one makes the most sense to me. (I always want to lose myself in the story, not in the tool.)

There’s a peek behind the scenes for this week! I hope you found it interesting, or, if you’re a writer yourself, that it gave you food for thought.

Workshop at RTC

Posted on by under author resources, Writing Life

Romancing the Capital 2019This morning, I’m teaching a workshop at RTC (Romancing the Capital) called A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing Options. I have two hours. The workshop clocks out at an hour and twenty minutes. I have over 100 slides! I hope the projector works. I hope I get through the whole talk without getting derailed by questions and we can have questions at the end.

Fingers crossed!

For simplicity’s sake, I created a page here on the site with hotlinks for all the portals and services I’ll mention in the talk. Their logos go past on the slides, but the links are on the RTC Links page under the Author Resources tab.

After the workshop is over, it’ll just be fun. I’m participating in several panel discussions and will be hanging out, talking to readers. There’s a huge booksigning on Saturday afternoon – which is open to the public, if you’re in the area – and I loaded the car up with books. It sounds as if this will be the last RTC, which makes me sad because it’s a terrific reader conference, but I know it will be a particularly awesome one this year.

Wish me luck with my workshop!

A Little Bit About Publishing Contracts

Posted on by under author resources, Publishing

I was asked recently by a new author to have a peek at a contract offered to her and thought that a general post about pitfalls might be welcome. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read, rejected and signed a lot of publishing contracts. I’ve made some mistakes and learned from them. I’ve also learned from some generous people who are very experienced in publishing contract law.

Many authors actively express their dislike of contracts. While contracts are not the most riveting reads, I like them – they document the expectations of each party in the relationship. Sometimes you learn things about your proposed partner in a contract. Contracts also specify how the relationship will end and what happens in pretty much all eventualities. They’re maps, in a way, and I love maps.

The first and foremost thing you need to do is actually read the contract. Yes. Read it. Read the whole thing. Then read it again. If you don’t understand any part of the contract, then ask what it means. Research it. Know what you’re signing before you sign it. A contract isn’t like the Terms of Service at a portal – contract terms are negotiable. Everyone doesn’t get the same deal. You need to understand the terms of agreement.

Publishing contracts are negotiable – although how much the house is willing to negotiate with you is affected by how much they want to publish your book. The first contract offered by the house is called the boilerplate: this is the best deal for the house and the worst deal for authors. If you have an agent, he or she may have already negotiated an agency boilerplate, which is offered as a starting point for his or her clients, and is already a better deal. Whether you have an agent or not, there are probably places where you can make improvements to the boilerplate by negotiation. I’ll focus on some areas where you’re most likely to have success. This is by no means a substitute for asking questions and having more experienced individuals look over your contract. It’ll just give you an idea of some things to look for.

A publishing contract begins by listing the parties who are agreeing to do business together. For a book contract, this will be the publisher and the author. Notice that while you as author might be an individual, you’re probably making an agreement with a corporation, not the individual editor who is presenting the offer. If your editor leaves the publishing company, your contract will stand, because it’s with the house. (The same is true with an agency contract, unless your agent is a sole proprietorship.) Be sure that the contract is between the publisher and your legal entity – it might be your name, if you’re operating as a sole proprietorship, and it might be your corporation. If you are incorporated, there might be a rider that stipulates that you specifically will create the work.

The Grant of Rights is usually the first section of the contract. This part can be quite long as it defines what rights you as author are surrendering to the publisher for the duration of the contract. It’s pretty characteristic for a boilerplate contract to list all rights here – all territories, all languages, all formats and all subsidiary rights – even though in many cases the house only intends to use world English in ebook and print. Ideally, you will narrow the grant of rights to those rights the house actually intends to use. If they want the others later, they can always offer for them then. Any advance payment is, after all, calculated on the basis of what the house plans to do – if you surrender more rights than they plan to use, they’re essentially getting them free. You might make a strategic choice of letting the house “pave the way” for you in new markets – maybe with audio – if they have a strong record of doing that and doing it well. In that case, you might leave audiobook rights in the deal, even though the advance might not be increased. This is a personal choice and you can see an example of that at work below. FWIW, I never leave performance rights in a book deal. The vast majority of the time, they aren’t exercised, but when they are, there’s a lot of money involved and if/when that happens, I’d like control.

The work is defined in the contract, whether it’s one book or a series of books, in terms of length and genre/sub-genre. There will be delivery dates specified for each book, as well as the mechanism for delivery, and an editorial process should be defined, too. The publication date may be defined but more likely, there’s a window defined for publication, such as “within eighteen months of delivery of the book manuscript”. If it isn’t specified, it should be.

One of the things you should be looking for when you read the contract is ways that this deal could be stretched out and leave you in limbo. You’re going to be working with this publisher for several years at least, but if the relationship isn’t a successful one, you don’t want to be stuck in it forever.

There may be a non-compete clause and these clauses always deserve a close review. A non-compete may stipulate that you can’t publish a work elsewhere featuring the characters or the world in this work; it might stipulate that you can’t publish anything under the same author brand, regardless of content; it might declare that you can’t publish anything elsewhere under the term of the contract. This can be a pretty unreasonable condition, especially if the house is offering to publish one book and is paying no advance. If it’s a standalone book under a new pseudonym and you think the fit is perfect, that’s one thing – if it’s first in a series under your main author brand set in a world you intend to spend many books exploring, this clause is probably a deal-breaker for you. The non-compete might give the publisher control over your fictional world and/or your characters even after you deliver the work specified in this contract, which isn’t a concession to make lightly.

It is much cleaner to have an option clause. An option clause gives the house right-of-first-refusal on the next similar work, the next work under the same pseudonym, the next work set in the same world or featuring the same characters. Ideally, what’s due under the option clause should be tightly defined and limited to a single work. (There are perpetual option clauses out there, which allow right-of-first-refusal forever.) There should also be a date for the delivery of the option (within 30 days of the publication of the last book on the deal, for example) and there should be a date stipulated for a response from the house (30 or 60 days after submission). It should be clear that if the house declines to offer for the option book, you can publish it wherever and however you choose. The non-compete and the option clause can certainly work together to protect both the house’s investment and the author’s intellectual property. How much control you want to surrender in exchange for whatever they offer is a personal choice.

The advance will be stipulated in the contract, as well as how and when it will be paid. If there is an advance, there can be some wiggle room here, both in increasing the amount and speeding up the payments. I’ve seen a lot of contracts lately which offer no advance in exchange for all rights and would advise you to seriously consider what a house offering this kind of deal can do for you and your book.

An advance is an advance against royalties, so the contract will define how royalties are calculated and when they will be paid. This can be a huge section that allows for tiers of payment and deep discounting as well as various formats and territories. The big thing to look out for here is “net receipts“. There’s a very old bit of advice to authors that they should always negotiate to be paid out of gross sales when making a movie deal, not net sales, because even blockbuster movies don’t always make a profit. (Scroll down to Author Controversy on the Wiki page for Forrest Gump, for example.) Print royalties are usually calculated out of gross sales – for mass market editions, the author might get anywhere from 4% to 8% of gross sales. It’s common for digital rights to be paid according to a percentage of net receipts, though. At the very least, net receipts should be defined in the contract – are expenses deducted or not? If so, which ones? Even so, it’s much cleaner to be paid out of gross sales (although you may have a battle to get that.) Net receipts is often explained as “you’ll get X% of whatever we get”, but again, this is squishy. I got caught by this recently in a distribution agreement that I signed to get my work into libraries. It turned out that one of the portals delivering content to libraries was owned by the distributor with which I had the contract. On roughly $1000 of gross sales, the subsidiary reported net sales of $10. My share came out of the $10, i.e. “you’ll get X% of whatever we get”. I don’t do business with those people anymore.

When you create a work, you automatically hold copyright in that work. Copyright carries a number of rights for the creator, including the right to reproduce and sell the work. A publishing contract is essentially a licensing of that right for that work to a publisher. The contract should stipulate that the publisher will register your copyright in the nation of first publication (often the US) on publication, and it should stipulate what name will be used in that registration.

The contract should also define how and when this license ends, which is the moment that the rights to reproduce and sell the work revert to you. This is called the reversion clause. When your rights revert, you can license them to another publisher, or you can publish the book yourself in a new edition. There should be a precisely defined trigger for the reversion of rights. They might revert automatically in a specified number of years after the deal is signed. Foreign language rights tend to be handled this way: they’re often five-year licenses and at the end of that term, the rights revert without any paperwork. Once upon a time, reversion was possible when a book was “out-of-print” but with print-on-demand technology, books are never really out-of-print. OOP is intended as a measure of demand, so a better reversion clause defines out-of-print by sales volume- i.e. rights can revert when unit sales in all formats drop below a defined threshold per year. The goal, of course, is to make this number higher so reversion occurs sooner. Some houses stipulate that reversion can occur when a certain period of time has passed since the house’s last exercise of rights. This used to be the case at Harlequin, because they did very actively produce foreign editions. When I signed with them in the 1990’s, they did buy all rights, but they used them. As a result, when I went to Bantam and Warner, I already had audience in Germany and Italy and other foreign-language markets. The Harlequin editions “paved the way”, even though I didn’t make much money from them in the first place.

There are also a lot of repayment clauses in contracts these days, stipulating that the author must repay the cost of editing, formatting and packaging the book to the publisher in various situations. One situation might be if the book doesn’t sell sufficiently well, which is ridiculously vague, or if the author breaks the deal at any time. For me, these expenses are the house’s responsibility and not earning them back is their risk in entering the deal. After all, they’re the ones who decided to offer a contract for publication for the book. They must have some notion of how well it will sell. I think it is unfair to expect the author to repay the house for any of these expenses, particularly as there is no guarantee of how well any of these services will be done. If you are going to sign this kind of clause, be sure that it has a very tight deadline – if you break the deal before publication, for example – and that it gives you the right (but not the obligation) to use the edited book, the copy, the formatting and the cover as you see fit. (I still wouldn’t sign it.)

The bankruptcy clause is another place worth a closer look. Often in contracts with small presses, the bankruptcy clause allows for the reassignment of rights – this means that if the house goes out of business or closes or files for bankruptcy, they can sell your book rights as an asset to whoever they want. Um, no. You want this clause to say that if the house ceases to do business or files bankruptcy or closes, your rights immediately revert to you.

There are a few areas to examine in any contract that you’re offered. It’s also a good idea to just read the document through and see what impression it gives you of the company that created it (or paid for its creation). Some contracts have a bullying tone. Some contracts put all the onus for success on the author. This should be an exchange: you’re providing your intellectual property to be marketed as a book in exchange for something. Have a very good idea of what the “something” is that you want out of the deal before you negotiate. If a contract doesn’t feel right or fair to you, it probably isn’t. Trust your instincts.

If you want to learn more about your publishing contract, you can join the Authors’ Guild. Their team will review your contact and walk you through each clause. When I took advantage of this service, it was free to members – I had to pay for the phone call to New York during business hours. It was a long call (several hours) but incredibly informative. One of the classic references is Kirsch’s Handbook of Publishing Law, if you want to read more. It’s more than twenty years old, but some essentials of publishing don’t really change. Others have, so you’ll want to look for more recent information about e-rights, for example.

But first, read your contract!

©2019 Deborah A. Cooke