What's actually in a book contract

A book contract is not one promise. It is a list of specific rights you grant, on specific terms, for a specific length of time. Read it as that list and most of the confusion clears. This article walks through the sections a publishing contract almost always has, and points at the lines worth reading twice. It is education, not legal advice — before you sign anything, a publishing lawyer or an agent is worth what they cost.

Which rights does the contract grant?

The grant clause names the rights you are handing over, and anything it does not name stays with you. That single sentence does more work than any other in the contract.

The rights usually split into two groups. Primary rights are the ones the publisher intends to exercise themselves: print, ebook, sometimes audio. Subsidiary rights are the ones they might license on to somebody else — translation, large print, book club, serial (extracts in newspapers or magazines), film and television, merchandising.

Watch for the word "all". A grant of "all rights in all languages throughout the world" is short and easy to understand, but enormous. A grant of "English-language print and ebook rights in the United States and Canada" is narrow, and everything outside it is still yours to license. Both are ordinary contracts. They are just not the same deal, and the difference is in one sentence. If you want to see what is left over after a grant like that, the rights you're sitting on covers it in more detail.

Where does it apply, and for how long?

Every grant has a place and a period, and the contract states both.

Territory is where the publisher may sell. "World" means everywhere. "North America" means everywhere else is still open. Some contracts grant world rights in English and leave every other language free.

Term is how long the grant runs. A fixed term ends on a date you can put in a diary. A term for "the life of copyright" runs until copyright itself expires, which is effectively permanent. In that kind of contract, the clause that ends the grant early matters far more than the term does.

Exclusive or not. An exclusive grant means nobody else may be given that right in that territory, including you. A non-exclusive grant leaves you free to grant the same right again elsewhere. Most publishing grants are exclusive. Some audio and anthology licences are not.

What are the money terms?

Three numbers matter: the advance, the royalty percentage, and what that percentage is a percentage of. The third one is the one people skip.

• The advance. Money paid up front against future royalties. You keep it whether or not the book earns it back, but you earn nothing further until it does. Look at how it is split: signature, delivery, publication. A third of it may be two years away. You rarely get it all up front.
• The royalty rate. A percentage of each sale. Rates often step up: 10% for the first several thousand copies, more after that. The step points are worth checking against what the book is likely to sell.
• The basis. A percentage of the retail list price and a percentage of net receipts are different animals. Net receipts means what the publisher actually banked after the retailer or wholesaler took their cut, which can be half the list price or less. Two contracts offering "25%" can pay very different money.
• Subsidiary rights splits. When the publisher licenses a translation or an audio edition, the fee is usually split — commonly somewhere between 50/50 and 80/20 in the author's favour, though it varies by right and by publisher.
• Accounting. How often you get a statement, how long after the period closes, and whether a reserve is held back against returns. A reserve delays money. It does not remove it.

When do the rights come back?

Reversion is the clause that returns the granted rights back to you, and it is the one most worth reading closely. It usually hangs on one of two triggers: the term simply ends, or the book falls below a stated level of sales or availability.

Older contracts talk about the book being "out of print". Print-on-demand and ebooks made that phrase almost meaningless — a book that is permanently orderable is never out of print in the old sense. Newer contracts replace it with a sales threshold: fewer than a stated number of copies in two consecutive accounting periods, and the author may ask for the rights back.

Whichever shape it takes, check whether reversion happens on its own or only when you write and request it. Most of the time you have to ask.

What else is worth finding before you sign?

These clauses are ordinary, easy to skim past, and expensive to discover later.

• The option clause. A promise about your next book — often that the publisher sees it first. Check what it covers ("your next work of fiction" is narrower than "your next book-length work") and how long they have to decide.
• Non-compete. Limits on publishing something similar elsewhere. Broadly worded ones can catch work you have already planned.
• Approvals. Who decides the title, the cover and the edits. Consultation is not approval.
• Audit rights. Whether you may examine the publisher's sales records, and who pays if an audit finds an error.
• What happens if the publisher is sold or closes. Whether the contract can be assigned to another company without asking you, and whether insolvency triggers reversion.
• Warranties and indemnity. You promise the work is yours and is not defamatory. Check whether you are covered by the publisher's insurance and whether the indemnity bites on a mere allegation or only on a judgment.

Things to consider

You may never negotiate a single clause, but understanding them still pays. Knowing that a grant is worldwide and permanent is useful even if you sign it anyway. It tells you what you no longer have to plan around.

Whatever you sign, write down what it says while you still remember reading it: which rights, to whom, where, until when. That summary is what you will actually consult in five years, not the contract itself.

How Pubblish handles this

Pubblish records a contract as what it grants rather than as a document you filed somewhere. Each contract names the other party and which way the rights travel. Each right the contract grants gets its own row: which right, over which books, in which territories, exclusive or not, and until when. The money terms sit on the same contract — a percentage of net revenue for ebooks, of your list price for print. Changing what a rate pays adds a dated row instead of overwriting the old one. Every book then gets a Rights page that reads those contracts back and shows each right as held, granted out, or still available. See the help guides for how to record one.