Very interesting information about rights reversion

One of these days I'm going to write a "short" on contracts. I've already given numerous talks on the subject for my meetup group and just last weekend I presented on this topic at Balticon. Authors are so excited to get a contract, that they don't read them carefully and consider the implications and this can be a HUGE mistake. In my talks I try to alert people as to where the landmines are and how to avoid them.

To me, one of the biggest issue about any contract is when and how you get your rights back. After all, once you have them again you are back in control. In an age when authors are making great money by e-publishing their own works this is an important consideration.

When I was at BEA at the end of May Richard Nash was boasting that his press, Red Lemonade, allows authors to leave after 3 years. I must say that this made me giggle a bit internally because a little known secret about the Ridan contract is that our authors can leave...ANY TIME THEY WANT. Yep, if they are unhappy with the way I've been handling their work, they can reclaim the rights and go elsewhere. They can even use this provision if they had been happy but want to trade up, say if a big-six publisher came knocking on their doors. I wish every author had this option available to them, but I know of no other company that has written a contract with such a stipulation -- and I doubt you'll find many rushing to do so. One day I'll blog on the Ridan's business model and why I can give authors this kind of freedom while no one else does - but that' s for another day. Let's get back to today's post.

The usual term of a contract (I was shocked to discover) grants the rights for "the life of the copyright". Which for those that don't know means for 50 years after the author's death (75 years for works of corporate authorship). That's a really, really long time and getting locked into anything with that long of a time worries me.

As mentioned above, some small press publishers will write contracts with a time limit. Heck, even the worst publisher in the world (we all know who you are cough--Publish America--cough) will revert your rights after seven years. I was pleased that when I sat in on a session for Dark Quest Books at Balticon that they write theirs for 3 years - a very good sign.

Now, the reality is that you'll probably get your rights back in your own lifetime because these contracts have provisions to revert the rights when a book goes "out of print". This too can be tricky in today's publishing climate as with ebooks and print on demand technology, it is theoretically possible for a publisher to keep the rights even if the book isn't selling well. For this reason it's important to specify a dollar value that if the books fall below this threshold will deem it as "out of print.

In any case, the reason for me bringing this up today is I found a FASCINATING blog post about a loop hole that will allow you to reclaim rights even if the contract stated for the life of the copyright. Apparently the copyright holder, or their heirs if they are dead, can terminate a copyright and since copyright law trumps contract law you essentially pull the rug out from underneath.

Now, before you start celebrating, you should know that you can only do this thirty-five years after the copyright filing which is still a long time, but better than forever. This provision was added to basically protect authors of older works from having to live with a bad deal they entered into when they had little negotiating skill or leverage.

This went into effect when copyright laws were changed in 1978 so in 2013 works such as Stephen King's The Stand could make use of this provision. I wish the time period was more like ten years than thirty-five but still its better than nothing, and something I found interesting.

If you have an older work that is locked up you would be eligible to start reverting those rights in 2013. You can read the full details at this link.