The Author Publisher Agreement is an agreement legally enforced between two parties, the first party being the Author/Writer- he is the one who has written the work. The second party being the publisher who is keen to publish the author’s work. This agreement contains all the key points that an agreement should have like all the rights, obligations and financial aspects.
The Advantages of Having an Author-Publisher Agreement:
- When an author pens up a book and signs a deal with any publishing house, the author’s book gets a team of professional editors, proof readers, formatters, cover designers. So, this proves to be a benefit to the author as he need not worry about organizing his book’s editing or formatting part.
- The author need not pay any upfront costs to publish their books; all such things would be taken care by the publishing company.
- When an author signs a book deal, they will likely receive a bonus called an advance, as long as the author fulfills their contract requirements, they are guaranteed to earn this advance regardless of how well their book sells after its been published.
- The validation that comes from a publishing deal can act as a motivator to improve a writer’s work.
- If any Author signs a deal with a publishing company they have a greater chance of becoming a well-known author, he will be having more opportunities to win book awards, earn starred reviews.
Must Have Clauses in the Agreement:
While there are many clauses in the agreement like the General Clause (Name of the parties, Descriptive of the Work), Grants of Rights and territory, Manuscript delivery, copyright ownership, Publications and Accounting Statements and many more. There are a few Basic Clauses which must be in the agreement, they are:
- The Physical, Practical Aspects of the Book’s development like: -
What will the work be;
The date of author’s delivery of the document.
- Author’s Copyright and the Publisher’s rights to publish and over what geographical territories.
- Financial Aspects of the book deal, like: -
The advance money paid against royalties
The exact royalty percentage that will be paid on each type of sale (hardcover, paperback, ebook).
Termination of Agreement:
In case if there is a bad publishing contracts, books are out of prints, mismanaged marketing, any kind of issue in the financial aspect there is always an option of termination of the agreement at the end of both the parties.
Termination can be done in 3 ways:
- Termination by Publisher
- Termination by Author
- Termination by Mutual Consent
Termination by Publisher:
- Author fails to Deliver
If the Author fails to deliver the manuscript till the date as decided in the agreement, the publisher has every right to terminate the agreement. The publisher can also ask to repay the money as paid to the author in the form of advance. It is always at the option of the publisher to give the author some grace period.
- Document not Satisfactory:
The main clause under the Publishing agreement is that the document should be acceptable to the publisher in the form of content. If it’s not acceptable according to the standards, Publishers have every right to terminate the Agreement.
Termination by Author:
- Publisher Fails to Publish:
This Agreement always has a date for the publication of the book. If the publisher fails to publish within that specified date, the author can terminate the contract; generally, the deadline for publishing a certain work of the author would be 12 to 18 months.
- Out of Print:
Author has an option to terminate the contract if the book is found to be out of print, here Out of Print means- when the book is no longer available for sale in any of the edition by the publisher.