Contracts

Authors Guild Supports FTC’s Proposed Ban on Non-Compete Clauses

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From The Authors Guild:

On April 19, the Authors Guild submitted comments in support of a new rule proposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that would make non-compete clauses illegal. Our comments discussed how non-competes are used in writing agreements and underscored the negative impact they have not only on author incomes but also on the ability for authors to publish the works they want to write. The Authors Guild conducted a survey of authors to better understand the impact of non-competes on their careers. We thank all of the authors who took part in our survey and gave us further insight into the professional impact of non-competes.

The FTC’s proposed rule would deem clauses that prohibit workers (including independent contractors) from working with others after the conclusion of their current engagements to be a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. Clauses that prevent authors and journalists from publishing similar works with others, or from working with competitors, are common in writing agreements, including book, journalism, and freelance contracts. In most cases, courts have found these clauses to be invalid, but authors often lack the resources or desire to get into a legal battle with their publishers and are unlikely to sue. If the FTC’s rule is enacted, authors could simply reject such clauses as invalid, pointing to the FTC rule.

Why Non-Competes Harm Authors

The Authors Guild has long objected to non-compete clauses and advised their removal in our contract reviews. These clauses, which are purportedly designed to protect publishers’ investments by preventing authors from selling the same or substantially similar work to another publisher, are often too broad. Authors are routinely asked to agree not to publish other works that might “directly compete with” the book under contract or “be likely to injure its sale or the merchandising of other rights.” Even more broadly, they may be asked not to “publish or authorize the publication of any material based on the Work or any material in the Work or any other work of such a nature such that it is likely to compete with the Work.”

Such open-ended non-compete clauses can prevent authors from pursuing other writing opportunities. If a new project even arguably deals with the same “subject” as the book under contract, the non-compete can be invoked to prevent an author from publishing elsewhere. For writers specializing in a particular subject, this could be career-derailing.

Results from the AG’s Survey on Non-Competes

Our survey showed that authors generally feel hindered by the restrictive nature of non-compete clauses. Out of the 630 respondents, 19.2 percent (121 authors) reported that non-compete clauses had prevented them from publishing a similar or competing book; 38.6 percent (243 authors) stated that they were forced to take a new book to the publisher of their last book before offering it to another publisher that might have been a better fit; and 15.7 percent (99 authors) reported that non-compete clauses had prevented them from writing and publishing articles or stories for other outlets or media.

Authors also reported feeling trapped in their contracts, unable to pursue other writing opportunities, fearful of potential legal repercussions if they attempted to publish elsewhere, or worried about losing the contract if they insisted on removing the non-compete clause.

Link to the rest at The Authors Guild

When PG was still representing authors who were signing publishing contracts, he routinely banged heads with in-house counsel about their existence and their wording. For him, the idea of a publishing non-compete was ridiculous because, in a very real way, every book competes with every other book for a reader’s attention and money.

Every Regency Romance competes with every other Regency Romance. Every science fiction novel competes with every other science fiction novel.

The standard line given to authors by publishers (directly or via a literary agent) is, “You wouldn’t want to compete with yourself.”

Why not? If you’re competing with yourself in a particular reader’s mind, they’re going to buy one of your books or another.

As PG reads the FTC rule, which became final three days ago, it sounds like it’s broad enough to cover publishing agreements. However, the wording of the rule primarily deals with employment contracts.

Here’s a section of the FTC’s explanation of the three exceptions to its rule:

The Final Rule identifies three exclusions: (i) non-compete clauses entered into in connection with a “bona fide sale” of a business entity, of an individual’s ownership interests, or of all or substantially all of a business’s operating assets; (ii) enforcing or attempting to enforce a non-compete clause where the cause of action accrued prior to the Effective Date; and (iii) enforcing or attempting to enforce a non-compete clause “where a person has a good-faith basis to believe” that the Final Rule does not apply to such non-compete clause.

Link to FTC Rule and Discussions

A typical publishing contract is an exclusive license granted by the author to a publisher usually, “for the full term of the copyright,” which effectively is the remainder of the author’s life plus 70 years. The author still “owns” copyright to the book, manuscript, etc., but can do nothing with the book unlesss the publisher violates its publishing agreement in some egregious manner.

PG thinks that there is an argument that this type of license is, in effect, a sale of the book, because the publisher’s license expires only when the author’s copyright expires and the publisher or anyone else, has the right to publish the book without paying anything to the author.

If the licensing of a book to a publisher for the life of its copyright is deemed to be the equivalent of a “bona fide sale” of substantially all of an author’s ownership interest in a particular book, then the publisher might have an argument that the new FTC rule does not apply to a publishing contract.

PG was going to dive deeper into the weeds to discuss why a publishing license for a particular book or series of books is not equivalent to the sale of the “ownership” of the author’s future books, but is simply an option, but he will spare the long-suffering visitors to more of his legal soothsaying.

The general counsels of major publishers are in discussions with outside counsel considering how big a fix they’re in with their existing book contracts and what they should do with their future publishing agreements.

PG’s speculation during these early days is that publishers will not be able to enforce future contracts that include a non-compete provision. He’ll have to think more about how the new FTC rule may apply to current publishing contracts.

If any visitors to TPV hear or read anything about traditional publishing and the prohibition of non-compete agreements that seems serious, PG would appreciate that information be sent to him via the “Contact PG” link at the top of the blog.

Emotion and the Art of Negotiation

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From The Harvard Business Review:

Summary.   

Negotiations can be fraught with emotion, but it’s only recently that researchers have examined how particular feelings influence what happens during deal making. Here the author shares some key findings and advice.

Anxiety leads to poor outcomes.

You will be less nervous about negotiating, however, if you repeatedly practice and rehearse. You can also avoid anxiety by asking an outside expert to represent you at the bargaining table.

Anger is a double-edged sword.

In some cases, it intimidates the other parties and helps you strike a better deal, but in other situations, particularly those involving long-term relationships, it damages trust and goodwill and makes an impasse more likely. To avoid or defuse anger, take a break to cool off, or try expressing sadness and a desire to compromise.

Disappointment can be channeled to reach a more satisfactory outcome.

Before disappointment becomes regret, ask plenty of questions to assure yourself that you’ve explored all options. And don’t close the deal too early; you might find ways to sweeten it if you keep talking.

Excitement isn’t always a good thing.

Getting excited too early can lead you to act rashly, and gloating about the final terms can alienate your counterparts. But if feelings of excitement, like other emotions, are well managed, everyone can feel like a winner.

. . . .

It is, without question, my favorite day of the semester—the day when I teach my MBA students a negotiation exercise called “Honoring the Contract.”

I assign students to partners, and each reads a different account of a (fictitious) troubled relationship between a supplier (a manufacturer of computer components) and a client (a search engine start-up). They learn that the two parties signed a detailed contract eight months earlier, but now they’re at odds over several of the terms (sales volume, pricing, product reliability, and energy efficiency specs). Each student assumes the role of either client or supplier and receives confidential information about company finances and politics. Then each pair is tasked with renegotiating—a process that could lead to an amended deal, termination of the contract, or expensive litigation.

What makes this simulation interesting, however, lies not in the details of the case but in the top-secret instructions given to one side of each pairing before the exercise begins: “Please start the negotiation with a display of anger. You must display anger for a minimum of 10 minutes at the beginning.” The instructions go on to give specific tips for showing anger: Interrupt the other party. Call her “unfair” or “unreasonable.” Blame her personally for the disagreement. Raise your voice.

Before the negotiations begin, I spread the pairs all over the building so that the students can’t see how others are behaving. Then, as the pairs negotiate, I walk around and observe. Although some students struggle, many are spectacularly good at feigning anger. They wag a finger in their partner’s face. They pace around. I’ve never seen the exercise result in a physical confrontation—but it has come close. Some of the negotiators who did not get the secret instructions react by trying to defuse the other person’s anger. But some react angrily themselves—and it’s amazing how quickly the emotional responses escalate. When I bring everyone back into the classroom after 30 minutes, there are always students still yelling at each other or shaking their heads in disbelief.

During the debriefing, we survey the pairs to see how angry they felt and how they fared in resolving the problem. Often, the more anger the parties showed, the more likely it was that the negotiation ended poorly—for example, in litigation or an impasse (no deal). Once I’ve clued the entire class in on the setup, discussion invariably makes its way to this key insight: Bringing anger to a negotiation is like throwing a bomb into the process, and it’s apt to have a profound effect on the outcome.

Until 20 years ago, few researchers paid much attention to the role of emotions in negotiating—how feelings can influence the way people overcome conflict, reach agreement, and create value when dealing with another party. Instead, negotiation scholars focused primarily on strategy and tactics—particularly the ways in which parties can identify and consider alternatives, use leverage, and execute the choreography of offers and counteroffers. Scientific understanding of negotiation also tended to home in on the transactional nature of working out a deal: how to get the most money or profit from the process. Even when experts started looking at psychological influences on negotiations, they focused on diffuse and nonspecific moods—such as whether negotiators felt generally positive or negative, and how that affected their behavior.

Bringing anger to a negotiation is like throwing a bomb into the process.

Over the past decade, however, researchers have begun examining how specific emotions—anger, sadness, disappointment, anxiety, envy, excitement, and regret—can affect the behavior of negotiators. They’ve studied the differences between what happens when people simply feel these emotions and what happens when they also express them to the other party through words or actions. In negotiations that are less transactional and involve parties in long-term relationships, understanding the role of emotions is even more important than it is in transactional deal making.

This new branch of research is proving extremely useful. We all have the ability to regulate how we experience emotions, and specific strategies can help us improve tremendously in that regard. We also have some control over the extent to which we express our feelings—and again, there are specific ways to cloak (or emphasize) an expression of emotion when doing so may be advantageous. For instance, research shows that feeling or looking anxious results in suboptimal negotiation outcomes. So individuals who are prone to anxiety when brokering a deal can take certain steps both to limit their nervousness and to make it less obvious to their negotiation opponent. The same is true for other emotions.

In the pages that follow, I discuss—and share coping strategies for—many of the emotions people typically feel over the course of a negotiation. Anxiety is most likely to crop up before the process begins or during its early stages. We’re prone to experience anger or excitement in the heat of the discussions. And we’re most likely to feel disappointment, sadness, or regret in the aftermath.

Avoiding Anxiety

Anxiety is a state of distress in reaction to threatening stimuli, particularly novel situations that have the potential for undesirable outcomes. In contrast to anger, which motivates people to escalate conflict (the “fight” part of the fight-or-flight response), anxiety trips the “flight” switch and makes people want to exit the scene.

Because patience and persistence are often desirable when negotiating, the urge to exit quickly is counterproductive. But the negative effects of feeling anxious while negotiating may go further. In my recent research, I wondered if anxious negotiators also develop low aspirations and expectations, which could lead them to make timid first offers—a behavior that directly predicts poor negotiating outcomes.

In work with Maurice Schweitzer in 2011, I explored how anxiety influences negotiations. First we surveyed 185 professionals about the emotions they expected to feel before negotiating with a stranger, negotiating to buy a car, and negotiating to increase their salary. When dealing with a stranger or asking for a higher salary, anxiety was the dominant emotional expectation; when negotiating for the car, anxiety was second only to excitement.

To understand how anxiety can affect negotiators, we then asked a separate group of 136 participants to negotiate a cell phone contract that required agreeing on a purchase price, a warranty period, and the length of the contract. We induced anxiety in half the participants by having them listen to continuous three-minute clips of the menacing theme music from the film Psycho, while the other half listened to pleasant music by Handel. (Researchers call this “incidental” emotional manipulation, and it’s quite powerful. Listening to the Psycho music is genuinely uncomfortable: People’s palms get sweaty, and some listeners become jumpy.)

Link to the rest at The Harvard Business Review

A long time ago, PG mentioned one of the best continuing legal education programs he ever attended featured a presentation on what was then called something like The Harvard Negotiating Studies Program. The program was a joint activity involving both the Law School and the Business School.

A lot of businesspeople and lawyers back then believed that negotiation skills were mostly a talent that someone either possessed or didn’t. Various negotiation strategies were thought to be optimum – Take it or Leave it – Always start with a higher price than you are willing to accept. Nobody should pay list price for anything.

There were a few business and law professors who had conducted studies and written papers and books about negotiation. PG remembers that a couple of professors at The University of Minnesota were writing about the subject.

The Harvard Program posited that negotiation skills could be learned. The first stage involved a series of experiments involving students and, in some cases, professors. Each participant played the role of a business executive negotiating the price and terms of an agreement with a third-party supplier of an important component needed by the business executive for her/his business.

Both the buyer and the seller were tasked with getting the best deal for their business—the seller wanted a higher price/better terms, and the buyer sought a lower price/better terms.

If the parties were not able to come to an agreement, the negotiation was regarded as a failure.

A large number of these negotiations were held and videotaped, using law and business students as negotiators. The videotapes were carefully analyzed and a variety of new ideas about effective negotiations and negotiation strategies were developed.

One of the main discoveries was that preparation in advance for a negotiation was very important for success. One of the preparation tasks involved determining the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement – BATNA.

BATNA allowed a negotiator to avoid being trapped into a mindset that she/he absolutely had to get a deal from the negotiation. BATNA meant that there was always an alternative to coming to an agreement in this particular negotiation.

Between when PG first discovered negotiation science and now, it appears to PG that the Harvard Project has grown into a full-blown permanent organization involving both the Harvard Law School and the Business School.

Here’s how the Law School describes it:

The Harvard Negotiation Project seeks to improve the theory and practice of conflict resolution and negotiation using real-world conflict intervention, theory building, and education and training.

The Harvard Negotiation Project was created in 1979 and was one of the founding organizations of the Program on Negotiation consortium. The work of faculty, staff, and students associated with the Harvard Negotiation Project routinely moves back and forth between the worlds of theory and practice to develop ideas that practitioners find useful and scholars sound.

As the world’s first teaching and research center dedicated to negotiation, its founders are among the true pioneers in the field. As part of their commitment to helping other teachers, the Harvard Negotiation Project staff have developed a wealth of negotiation exercises, teaching notes, videotaped demonstrations, and interactive video and electronic lessons and made them available through the Program on Negotiation and Harvard Business School Publishing.

Along with the many classes and teaching materials, the Harvard Negotiation Project is famous for its development of “principled negotiation” as described in Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton’s groundbreaking work, Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.

Getting to YES has helped negotiators claim value and create value at the bargaining table ever since its first publication in 1981 and continues to do so today. Getting to YES has shown negotiators how to create value for mutual benefit and avoid acrimonious disputes at the bargaining table and, in doing so, has changed the negotiation landscape.

PG immediately started using these principles in negotiations he was involved with as a rural attorney. They worked very well and his clients benefitted.

PG apologizes for wandering deep into Yarn Country, but he was triggered by the OP.

Book Publishing Contracts – Checklist of Deal Terms

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From Morse:

The path to publication generally requires authors to sign a “publishing contract” that covers such topics as: manuscript delivery and acceptance, copyright ownership and grants; royalty advances, rates and payment; author warranties and indemnities; contract duration and rights reversion (out-of-print); options on new works; and limitations on competing works. But if you’re an author who can’t find, wait for, or afford a lawyer, how do you know what terms are standard, reasonable or fair?

The following is not meant as legal advice, but rather as a checklist and guide to the issues typically covered, and the terms publishers typically offer, so you can identify issues to consider and possibly address and thereby make the time spent with your lawyer or other advisor more efficient. 

1. Rights granted (Form, Language, Market, Time):

A. Copyright ownership: Who will own and control the bundle of copyrights, in what media, and in what geographic regions (see below)?

  • Author should own the copyright (though academic publishers often demand an assignment of the copyright); ideally it should state that rights not specifically granted are reserved to Author.
  • If you can’t avoid “work made for hire” or express assignment to Publisher, be sure to address the termination of the grant/contract and reversion of rights to Author (see “out of print” below at 9.F and 15.E).
  • Publisher ideally should agree to register copyright in Author’s name (or at least allow the Author to do so – avoid registering copyright in Publisher’s name).

B. Territories (EC & Australia considerations): Where can the rights be exercised? Some publishers will seek worldwide rights; but industry customs favor a more nuanced approach, given that translation rights are implicated. So, consider which territories it makes sense for your publisher to control and start from there.

C. Subsidiary rights: first serial (exclusive right to be first periodical to print story, article, excerpt, etc.), second serial (nonexclusive right to publish after first publication by another periodical), reprint (essentially same as second serial), British Commonwealth (publication in any of over 50 countries, mostly former British colonies), other foreign territories, translation, motion picture, TV, dramatic, audio, electronic, multimedia, podcast, commercial and merchandising – which of these rights are reserved or granted? Consider: how well placed is Publisher to sell such rights, and how successful historically? Here are other issues to address:

  • Proportion in which proceeds shared (standard: 90% first serial, 75/80% UK and foreign, 50-66% other). 
  • Author or agent approval of sub rights licenses controlled by Publisher.
  • Pass-through (after advance is repaid, ideally the royalties owed for sub rights – typically ½ of what Publisher receives – should flow through to Author 30-60 days after receipt).
  • Hard/soft deal vs. Hard/soft separate.
  • Author ideally retains dramatic, film, TV, radio, merchandising (today’s standard publishing agreement often retains these for Publisher; but consider arguing that these should remain with Author unless Publisher has affiliates, proven success or special expertise to do these things).
  • Author ideally retains rights to characters, settings, title (if fiction with series prospects).
  • Preserving and allocating electronic, audio, and video rights and rights in new technologies (ideally no right to add music or sound effects without Author approval).
  • Book club rights – be sure royalties are fair (don’t become a free or low-cost giveaway).
  • If Publisher takes subsidiary rights you care about, press to have any rights that Publisher has failed to exploit within a reasonable period (e.g., 2 –3 years after book published) revert to Author.
  • Include general reservation of rights clause: any rights not expressly granted to Publisher remain with Author.

2. Advance and Royalties: Amount and Schedule

A. Advances – Ideally these should be nonrefundable; at worst, if manuscript rejected, Publisher may only recover from “first proceeds” under next contract for the same work

  • Ideal: 1/2 on signing, 1/4 on delivery of half MS, 1/4 on final acceptance.
  • Avoid “payment on publication” (though that’s what many Publishers offer).

B. Royalty Rate (but (i) understand base against which rate applied: ideally it would be cover or list price, but it may be net of freight pass-through (“invoice” price), or simply – and less favorably – net receipts, and (ii) if based on net receipts, ask what discount applies to their normal channels and what percent of their sales is at a deeper discount)

  • Hard cover: 5,000 – 10%; 10,000 – 12 1/2%; 15,000 – 15%
  • Mass market paper: 6/8% (on first 50-150,000), increasing to 10%
  • Trade paperback: 6/7 1/2% (on first 25,000), increasing to 9/10% (often on “net price” or “amount received,” which is typically 1/3 – 1/4 off list)
  • E-books: highest print rate; 20-50% net (35% increasingly common)
  • Audiobooks: 10-25% net for physical copies, 25-50% for digital copies
  • Academic and scholarly texts, including textbooks: 6-15% net

C. Bonus payments or increased payments in the event of:

  • Book club sales
  • Bestseller list appearance (identify which lists count, e.g., New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Amazon Charts)
  • Award winner: Pulitzer, NBA, etc.
  • Motion picture or TV development
  • Earn-out advance

D. Discount Schedule: consider distinguishing premium sales to business from bulk sales to specialty stores, and request sharing “costs” of deep discounts.

E. Royalty reductions may be proposed for: deep discounts, special sales, mail order, premium sales, small print runs (typically 50% of standard rates or a flat low rate, e.g., 5%).

  • If the royalty is lower for deeper discounts, learn what percentage of their books are sold at what discount levels.

F. If the book includes advertising or other third-party content (other than excerpts from other works published by Publisher), Author gets 50% of fees paid to Publisher.

G. Authors and Illustrators of children’s books generally share revenue 50/50, unless either hires other to do work.

H. Grants: Authors of textbooks and nonfiction may require grant funds to cover extra expenses, such as travel, research assistance or special artwork.

Link to the rest at Morse

Writing Dreams Do Come True: What Happens After you Get “That Call”

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Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris:

THE OFFER

I’m writing this guest post from behind two boxes of books just delivered from the publisher. When I pried one open, the cover of the novel I’ve labored over for so long was revealed, and I laughed out loud, like a schoolgirl. I couldn’t stop. The flood of emotion was a culmination of years of writing dreams and an arduous journey, one that started on September 20th, 2021.

On that warm September morning, I was sitting at my desk with a cup of coffee and the windows open to check my email.  I set my cup down and stared at the message in my inbox. (I’m sure my mouth dropped.) I had an email from the Production Editor at Unsolicited Press, the independent publisher I had sent my manuscript to over nine months earlier.  In part it read:

After reviewing thousands of submissions this summer, we narrowed it down to less than 40 projects to fill out 2023 and 2024. Your book was one of them. If the book is still available, contact us at your earliest convenience to discuss the details. This offer expires in two weeks.

I nearly fell off my chair. I was so used to the industry wide no response means no, I had assumed this submission had also fallen into that black hole. Was my book still available? Does my Hemingway cat have polydactyl thumbs?

THE BEGINNING

The true beginning of this journey dates back to September of 2017. That was when I finally let go of my writing dreams for Novel #1 and #2 and started to write the first draft of Novel #3, Let Evening Come.

After the first draft was complete, I gave it a short rest. But I was eager to get back into it and printed off a bunch of pages so I could mark it up with pencil. Somehow, seeing my story on paper helps me see what I want to say. After another edit and then another — falling in love a third time with a third book — I let my daughter, the editor, read it.

With her suggestions in mind I tightened the narrative, fixed my dialogue tags, added more character interiority — I tend to hold my reader at arm’s length — and nixed some unnecessary secondary character POV. After a couple more rounds with a sister or two who consented to reading another one of “Yvonne’s missives”, I thought I was in a good place to begin querying agents.

THE QUERY

I spent a great deal of time on that letter, until I had the most perfect query letter (swallow) imaginable. I had done my research and targeted my ideal agents, widening the circle as one by one they rejected me.

The responses (when there was one) were sadly the same: Publishing is a subjective business and other agents may feel differently.

I dearly wish I’d kept some of the handwritten rejection notes I got when I started querying my first novel, a Vietnam Era love story, which has since turned historical. (Every time I pen that word, I think hysterical. Kinda like the first time I wrote a blog post about bookstores and referred to B&N as B&E) 🙂 

Those rejection notes carried a hint of personality. They were mine! And as dissimilar from today’s canned rejections as my floppy discs were from the Cloud. Who wants to print out impersonal, canned rejections to hang on the wall? And here I wanted to be like Stephen King, saving and bragging about his rejections.

I wasn’t comfortable with trying to self-publish, but I wasn’t giving up. There are many small independent publishers who accept manuscripts directly from writers, and I decided to give them a try. I winnowed that list down to the five I liked best — a considerably shorter list than my ideal agent list — and queried Unsolicited Press on 12/02/20. So, nearly nine months had passed before they responded via email on September 20, 2021, the morning I nearly fell off my chair.

THE “CALL”, THE CONTRACT & EDITORIAL CALENDAR

So, long story short, whereas it used to be “The Call” writers yearned for, now it’s as likely to be “The Email.”

Production Editor Esme gave me two weeks to respond, but I didn’t need two weeks. In fact, I didn’t need two days. I reckon I sent back a breathless YES that same morning.

The next step was signing the contract, a standard industry-wide document, but Esme wisely told me to take the weekend and write down any questions I had. Of course, I had questions but nothing they couldn’t answer to my satisfaction. 

I then had several months to get my final copy to them. The manuscript was 110,000 words, so I needed all of that to go over it once again. Then came the editorial calendar with copy edits dates, cover development, proofreading dates and deadlines. We fell behind that calendar but finally the galley was out — I had a galley! — and my manuscript began to take the shape of a book. Writing dreams were coming true.

The press pulled it all together to get back on track to meet the original publishing date of April 2, 2024. They sent me one printed ARC to read, and I had my last and final chance to catch any errors. I only found one! My editor, Summer, told me that was the first time that had ever happened. Of course, I still fear there’s one lurking in the margins that everyone missed.

In the meantime, they set me up with a Universal Book Link through Books2Read. It’s the platform by which shoppers can access their digital store of choice with one click. It’s a great tool for self-published authors too.

PREORDERS – THE FINAL LAP

Preorders seed excitement.

If you like an author and want that person to keep writing books, then supporting them during a book launch isn’t such a bad idea. All preorders count towards the first week of sales so they help an author get all to a good start. When you preorder a book, it tells bookstores people want this book, which typically makes them stock more copies of the book, which of course means more people see it and buy it.  So, if there is a book coming out from one of your writerly friends via traditional publishing that you plan to purchase anyway, the best way to support them is to preorder.

With ten days to go, my fear that it won’t be well received looms like a thunderhead.

The self-doubt that plagues all writers (our own worst enemy) keeps me up at night. But from first draft to planning a launch party, the long slog is worth it. (You have to have a party!!) In the end, we have to trust ourselves, our publishers, and all the people working on our behalf behind the scenes.

Link to the rest at Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris

PG would have passed the OP by, except for the author’s description of a “standard industry-wide” publishing contract she received from her publisher, Unsolicited Press.

THERE IS NO STANDARD INDUSTRY-WIDE PUBLISHING CONTRACT. SUCH A DOCUMENT DOES NOT EXIST.

“This is our standard contract” always causes to immediatly automatic direction for shields to be raised on the Starship PG. Adding “industry-wide” causes the reserve shields to deploy and extend long, nasty horns that shoot fire.

The term, “standard contract,” may, in fact, be true for a publisher, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a fair contract or a contract that contains no nasty surprises.

PG has examined several trillion contracts from publishers large, medium and small and he can say with certainty that no two publishers have identical publishing contracts.

PG understands that large literary agencies have copies of publishing contracts from major publishers that are already marked up. “Standard Contract” = “Standard Mark up”

PG had never heard of Unsolicited Press, so he looked it up on Amazon. Then he had Zon order the press’s books by sales rank.

This exercise resulted in Dark Roux appearing as Unsolicited Press’s top-ranked book. When PG looked, that book had a ranking of 2,016,017 in Kindle Store (it did have 18 rankings for a five-star average). He then checked the trade paperback ranking and found a sales rank of 500,377 in Books. The audiobook for Dark Roux was ranked 483,444 when PG checked today.

PG checked out several other Unsolicited Press listings on Amazon and found rankings quite similar to the Dark Roux rankings above.

He then checked on Barnes & Noble and discovered no sales rank for Dark Roux (per BN practice), but found no reader reviews for the book, which may be an indicator of something.

PG is going to stop now because he doesn’t want to pile on a new author and a very small press.

But he warns one and all to read and understand every publishing contract and every non-publishing contract before signing it.

If you want to get warmed up prior to seeing an attorney about a proposed publishing contract, The Authors Guild website has an excellent Model Trade Book Contract available online at no charge PG could discern. It’s worth your time to work your way through it. If you do so, you’ll know more about publishing contracts than all authors who haven’t read it plus any number of literary agents.

PG notes that the Authors Guild Model Contract may not provide reliable guidance for publishing contracts with publishers located outside of the U.S.

For example, British publishers are operating under British law, not generally-common principles of US contract and publishing law. British and US laws are similar because the US borrowed British legal principles way back when. However, although similarities persist in many different areas of the law, significant differences have arisen during the almost 250 years since the American Revolution commenced.

The Case for Pursuing a Traditional Publishing Deal Without an Agent

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From Jane Friedman:

Securing the services of a literary agent has long been the gold standard for authors pursuing a long and successful career in publishing.

It’s easy to understand why. At the turn of the twentieth century, the so-called “author’s representative” emerged as the figure who would help authors cut a better deal with publishers. Most publishers were unhappy about this since agents who skillfully leveraged their clients’ hot properties forced publishers to shell out more money on better terms.

By mid-century, the agenting game was well established. Legendary agents like Sterling Lord (Jack Kerouac and Doris Kearns Goodwin were among his clients) and Robert Gottlieb (Toni Morrison, Robert Caro) impressed writers with their ability to champion talent, nurture genius, and land lucrative publishing deals. Needless to say, authors couldn’t accomplish half so much on their own behalf. The gatekeepers had won—and were here to stay.

Fast forward to today. Agents still function as gatekeepers, especially to the Big Five publishers and many top-tier smaller publishers, such as Tin House (whose open-reading periods are limited to a few days a year). Breakout debuts by authors like Jessica George (represented by David Higham) and stratospheric careers like Bonnie Garmus’ (repped by Curtis Brown) would not be possible without agents in the mix.

But, dear authors, securing an agent is not the only path to getting happily published (outside of self-publishing).

One big reason to consider other strategies (especially with a first book) is that the agenting business model is showing serious signs of wear-and-tear. Many agents readily admit the industry is in flux.

According to the latest member survey by the Association of American Literary Agents, an overwhelming majority of agents report feeling burned out and are working too much uncompensated overtime. And no wonder, as roughly a fifth of them receive 100 or more queries per week. Many also feel underpaid, given that roughly two-thirds depend in part or entirely on commissions—and making a sale can take months, if not years. (Do you imagine this is an elite group? Roughly 30 percent of American agents earn less than $50,000 annually.)

There’s no need to put all your editorial eggs into this one (turbulent) basket.

Scores of traditional small presses operating professionally and ethically in North America (and the UK, Australia, and elsewhere) are open to reviewing manuscripts year-round or seasonally without charging a fee.

Before getting into nuts and bolts on this, let me anticipate some objections that I know are out there, because the lure of agent-magic is strong:

But going directly to a publisher is less prestigious than going with an agent!

Even if that were objectively true, by the time your book is out in the world, readers have no idea how it got there and aren’t thinking about who reps you. The means justify the ends.

But an agent will fight for a better contract, or a bigger advance, than I’d get by negotiating with the publisher myself!

There may be some truth to this, but the tradeoffs are worth considering. For one thing: you’re getting published! A small advance, or no advance, may be offset by your efforts to successfully market your book when it comes out. Secondly, consider spending a few hundred dollars for an attorney to review your contract. The Authors Guild does this for free, and some states (such as Maryland) offer pro bono legal services to artists.

But a small press can’t market my book effectively!

It’s true that the Big Five publishers have bigger marketing budgets for ads and other forms of publicity. But will they put any of that money behind your book? And even big-name authors are increasingly expected to help market their own books and participate on social media.

The best small presses will submit reviews to the same outlets as the Big Five, from Kirkus to Publishers Weekly, and will engage in guerrilla marketing techniques to get you noticed. The gap in marketing efforts is not as wide as you think—and you’ll be expected to self-market with any publisher.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

PG says 99 out of 100 small presses have most of the drawbacks of large publishers with even more downside risk.

A large publisher will generally offer to pay a respectable advance. Most small publishers can’t afford those kind of up-front expenditures.

A small press, by definition, doesn’t sell very many books. A small press has to really fight to get one of its titles selected by a major reviewer with lots of readers.

Yet, the terms of a typical small press publishing contract almost always follows New York publisher patterns of demanding everything without a binding commitment to generate a respectable number of sales.

None of the small presses PG has examined vary from large publisher results of an occasional blockbuster, but mostly books that get launched, then flame out.

Kris on The Findaway Scam…

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From Dean Wesley Smith:

A few weeks or so back, Kris did a post on her patreon page about what happened with Findaway and writers. I linked to it, but now she gave me permission to put it here to help writers understand another level of business.

The Fallacy of the Findaway “Victory”

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I do not know how to start this piece without using insulting language. I have literally deleted five first paragraphs which use the words “ignorant,” “stupid,” “dumb,” and certain swear words that should not be attached to people and organizations.

I can’t write this without using one of those words. Insert the one that offends you the least. But here it is: the average writer and average writers’ organization are so ignorant about business that they have no idea what just happened with Findaway.

For those of you who don’t know the story, in February, Findaway Voices released a new terms of service that will go into effect this month. It was the notification that users needed to have by law so that they would know what had changed. And believe me, a lot changed.

. . . .

Writers saw the changes and went up in arms about everything that Findaway asked for. So within hours, Findaway backtracked and released a new terms of service that, in theory, addressed all of the writers’ concerns.

Writers declared victory on social media. They did a happy dance all over their accounts. They kept their books on Findaway, because that was what Findaway wanted. The Authors Guild, never the smartest organization in the room, wrote this:

We appreciate Spotify’s responsiveness to our concerns and those of the author community. We will continue to review the terms and any future updates to ensure that they do not encroach on authors’ rights, and look forward to continuing a productive dialogue with Spotify.

If you actually read the new TOS, including the parts that the Authors Guild quotes in their “we approve and we won” post, you’ll see that the new terms are still objectionable. They’re just not as objectionable as the first TOS offered that day.

The final TOS, though, is much, much, much worse than the TOS writers initially agreed to when they agreed to be part of Findaway.

And therefore, the lawyers at Findaway have won the actual victory and are probably giggling (still) into their celebratory beers.

Here’s how it works, folks.

If writers and writers organizations understood anything about negotiation, they would realize they were part of a bait and switch that lawyers do all the time. In fact, lawyers are trained to do this for their clients.

First, you ask for everything, including the firstborn child and maybe all the children, as well as the stuff that’s objectionable but not as easy to understand.

Then you wait for the expected outcry.

When the outcry comes, you say, Oh, we didn’t mean to ask for children. Our mistake. Here, we’ll fix it.

Then they release their new terms in which references to children are gone, and the language that seems objectionable gets toned down.

The other party, so shocked by being told they’re going to have to give up their children to stay in this organization, say, oh, thank heavens, this TOS is just fine.

They compare the revised TOS to the horrid TOS, instead of comparing the revised TOS to the TOS that the clients initially agreed to.

It’s smoke and mirrors, and it worked beautifully.

There was a tell in Findaway’s gambit. They released the revised TOS within hours. Nope. Had this been a real mistake and these corporate attorneys truly misunderstood what they were asking for, they would have taken days if not weeks to revise the TOS.

The lawyers don’t make the decisions. They draft the TOS, and then the execs give their opinions, usually in writing. Then the changes go back to the lawyers, and the lawyers draft another TOS, which has to go to the execs, who then work it over, and finally, finally, someone will agree to something.

But not within hours.

This “capitulation” was planned. And since it was planned, the question you have to ask is what are they going to gain from this new TOS? If you read it with a jaundiced eye, you’ll see it.

There is so much wiggle room in their new language that they can still use your work to train AI models. They can change their permission structure so that you might give them permission to use those derivative rights or produce an AI audiobook without even realizing it. All it would take are a few words added or removed from their TOS.

So instead of getting a new TOS, which was what happened this time, you’ll get an email saying, we’re changing our TOS. Here’s your notice. We’re adding three words to clause 5, paragraph 2. You’ll glance at the three words which might seem random: like “grant” and “exclusive” and not look at the language of the new paragraph at all.

How many times have you done that, after all?

. . . .

So, writers, you did not “win” a victory over Findaway. You lost. Big time.

And not only did writers lose, but they’re bragging about the loss as if it were a great big victory.

Link to the rest at Dean Wesley Smith

PG hasn’t checked the new Findaway TOS/publishing contract. He’ll do so in the next few days and let everyone know what he thinks about it. In the meantime, Kris is sharp enough that PG would steer clear of the company.

Even if Findaway fixes a bunch of things, if they’re taking any portion of the royalties an indie author could receive via KDP, Findaway would have to guarantee a boatload of additional sales – in writing – in their contract/TOS.

Authors Equity points toward the future of publishing

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From Nathan Bransford:

Some pretty significant news arrived this week as some of the smartest and most experienced people in publishing are joining forces on a new imprint called Author Equity. Its business model says a lot about where we’re headed as an industry.

Essentially, Author Equity pledges to put authors first, and they won’t offer advances. They will instead offer the “lion’s share” (the former agent in me is shouting, “HOW MUCH IS THAT EXACTLY”) of the profits, and will maintain a lean staff that relies on freelancers for editing and production, with distribution by Simon & Schuster. Its author investors (including Atomic Habits author James Clear and The 4-Hour Workweek author Tim Ferriss) probably point the way toward the types of books they’re likely looking for. Namely, entrepreneurial bestsellers and bestsellers-in-the-making who are willing to forego the upfront investment of the advance in favor of making more on the backend.

Those of us who have been in this business for twenty odd years know that parts of this publishing model aren’t new. The no-advance-but-marketing-guarantees was adopted by the imprint Vanguard Press at the Perseus Books Group, which I profiled way back in 2008. (Vanguard was shuttered in 2012, and Perseus was acquired by Hachette in 2016). There have also been more behind-the-scenes deal structures like this that I’ve come across/heard about that I can’t really talk about specifically for confidentiality reasons, but trust me, they exist.

As Ron Charles notes, one thing imprints like this do is to shift more of the prospective investment of a new book onto the author. Which, again, has been around before, but I’ll be interested to see if it spreads more widely to the Big 5, where it’s never really caught on in a big way.

What feels new to me is the reliance on freelance labor. On the one hand, sure, I’m a freelance editor! I embraced the lifestyle even before the pandemic. If you offered me double what I make now, I’d still have a hard time imagining going back to a more traditional job.

Link to the rest at Nathan Bransford

PG notes that he hasn’t seen any Author Equity publishing contracts nor does PG know anything about the investors/managers the company has.

However, promising to give authors a percentage of the “profit” from the sales of her/his books is a system that’s perfectly set up to scam authors. Why might that be?

Gross revenue received by a business of any sort is not terribly easy to fiddle with. Basically, gross revenue is the money and other items with a monetary value the business receives. If a business receives payment in dollars, wheat, corn, gold, timber or diamonds, each of those has a market value that can be used as basis for calculating gross revenues.

Profits, on the other hand, are quite prone to fiddling. Salaries and benefits paid to staff are subtracted from the gross proceeds before profit is calculated. Business travel to exotic locations is a deductible expense that reduces profits.

Similarly, office rents, printing and shipping expenses reduce profits. Depreciation of equipment is another deduction that reduces profits. All sorts of things can be jammed into business expenses to effectively reduce profits.

Gross revenues from the sale of an author’s books are not susceptible to nearly as much “tweaking” as profits are. Auditing of royalties is also an easier process with gross revenues as the basis for royalties.

Protecting Your Work

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From Booklife:

The recent suspensions of authors from Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing for “copyright infringement”’ provide a powerful lesson on the importance of protecting one’s work. During this year’s BookLife Indie Author Forum, I took part in a panel discussion devoted to copyright issues. Last year, I also facilitated a roundtable discussion by the Independent Book Publishers Association, during which we talked about the hot topic of KDP suspensions for copyright infringement.

Case in point: I have an author-publisher friend who had a book on Amazon since the CreateSpace days without incident. For years, this book had been in publication, and the author owned the copyright. Several months ago, the author received an email from KDP saying that the book included copyright or trademark infringement and that their entire account would be suspended. For a publisher, this is a major problem.

The author’s inquiries about the reason and requests for further documentation and resolution were ignored. He contacted KDP on a regular basis, and, because of his persistence, the account was magically restored, and the book is live again. Compared with some of the other horror stories I’ve heard, my friend should be happy.

Another author told me he spent over $20,000 in legal fees for two books after KDP suspended his account for “copyright infringement.” His requests for clarification were ignored, and no resolution has been provided. Is anyone safe?

If you’re anything like me, you might think that the solution is simply to use publishing sites such as IngramSpark (my favorite), Draft2Digital, or Kobo, which also distribute your title to Amazon. Wrong. One author used one of these providers and shared that Amazon said that the company would have to contact the publisher, which was him, and then the distributor. When he contacted the distributor, the distributor contacted Amazon, which responded that there were no problems with the book and that it was available for purchase. When the author checked, it was not. This problem has still not been resolved.

As problematic as this is, just imagine if you had multiple books. All of your titles can be suspended if your KDP account is frozen. What happens to your royalties during this time? And if you spent money on Amazon ads, you would be paying the same entity that is holding your royalties during the suspension. If you were to continue advertising, on or outside of Amazon, you could lose money indefinitely.

The terms and conditions say Amazon can terminate without cause and keep the royalties owed, including any sales of inventory on hand. The terms only permit dispute resolution through the American Arbitration Association. Ever call the American Arbitration Association? One person was quoted an arbitration fee of $1,725 plus legal fees and an estimate of five to 10 months for resolution. Ouch! This amount is cheaper than the $20,000 I quoted earlier, but many authors cannot afford $1,725 in legal fees.

Here are some of the things that can get your KDP account suspended: using two different ISBNs for the same book format—i.e., one ISBN on IngramSpark and one on KDP (but using separate ISBNs for the paperback, hardcover, and e-book versions is fine); rights reverting to you from a previous publisher but have not been cleared by KDP; having a metadata change that implies a change in rights ownership; changing your imprint name (If you use a publishing provider such as IngramSpark, you can add an imprint name to your dashboard. This means that you need to check which one you use for each book you publish to avoid it defaulting to the wrong one); someone reports you for copyright infringement (even if the claim is not valid); or a bot error that is beyond an author’s control.

What can you do once your account is suspended? The answer varies depending on what triggered your suspension, which, according to some of those affected, is hard to get a clear answer from Amazon about. Here are a few things you can provide:

1. A screenshot of your ISBN account showing your name as owner and the imprint name with your book’s ISBN displayed

2. Approved copyright documentation from copyright.gov, not just the application (which can take up to eight months to receive)

3. Invoices and bank statements for editing costs from both your end as the publisher and from the editor’s end

4. Similar invoices and statements for cover design

Link to the rest at Booklife

OpenAI’s admission it needs copyright material is a gift to the publishing industry

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From The New Publishing Standard:

The Writers Union of Canada is among the latest to, rightly, calls for legislation to regulate the excesses of AI companies as this sector evolves.

But as with so many of these calls for legislation, we need to be clear whether these are reasoned arguments looking to harness AI’s potential to benefit the long-term interests of the publishing industry, or knee-jerk reactions pandering to member’s short-term interests with meaningless soundbites.

In the US we’ve seen the Writers Guild embrace AI as a force for good, fully accepting the AI genie will never go back in the bottle, and so looking for the best ways to work with AI companies to benefit Writers Guild members.

“We have to be proactive because generative AI is here to stay,” said Mary Rasenberger, Authors Guild CEO, explaining, “They need high-quality books. Our position is that there’s nothing wrong with the tech, but it has to be legal and licensed.“

SAG-AFTRA, the US actors union, has taken the same approach.

Proactive rather than endlessly reactive.

While at the other end of the spectrum the outgoing head of the UK’s Society of Authors, Nicola Solomon, is peddling nonsense about how 43% of writers jobs will be devoured by the AI bogeyman.

The Writers Union of Canada has tried to find a mid-way path, and acknowledges AI can bring benefits to writers, but cannot help but seize on statement by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman saying that AI needs to use copyrighted material as some kind of admission the company is stealing writers’ IPs.

Given the current legal interpretation of what constitutes fair use, that assertion may or may not have legs, but for the AI opponents such details are neither here nor there. As and when the law on fair use is clarified one way or the other, then we can fling mud.

Similarly, demanding creators be paid for their efforts is right, but suggesting this is not happening is wrong.

The fact that Altman and his company have, since at least May 1923 at the White House AI summit, been talking about ways to pay for the use of copyrighted material, and since mid-summer have been signing deals with content-producers to do just that (American Journalism Project, Associated Press in July 2024, Axel-Springer in December), is being conveniently ignored.

Bloomberg last week reported that Thomson Reuters is looking to sign a deal with AI companies.

Tom Rubin, OpenAI’s chief of intellectual property and content, told Bloomberg News: “We are in the middle of many negotiations and discussions with many publishers. They are active. They are very positive. They’re progressing well. You’ve seen deals announced, and there will be more in the future.”

So these opponents of AI are missing opportunities to do deals that will favour creatives, for the sake of a sound-tough soundbite.

And in this context, we should be clear that the New York Times law suit against OpenAI is happening because negotiations with OpenAI failed, not because OpenAI was unwilling to pay.

In any case, Altman has made clear OpenAI can manage just fine without NYT data if necessary.

“We are open to training [AI] on The New York Times, but it’s not our priority. We actually don’t need to train on their data. “I think this is something that people don’t understand. Any one particular training source, it doesn’t move the needle for us that much.”

But this is not the only flaw in the Canada Writers Union case. The CWU has also gone down the “humans-only” road with its interpretation of copyright law.

“Copyright is an exclusive right of human creators. Existing copyright legislation protects human creativity and originality, by virtue of requiring the exercise of skill and judgment to obtain copyright in a work. This should not be changed to grant copyright protection to AI generated products or to allow copyrighted works to train models without permission.“

And again we have the juggling act with different issues mixed into a pot and violently stirred for the sake of a sound-tough soundbite.

No-one is asking for copyright law “be changed to allow copyrighted works to train models without permission.“

And the other part of the soundbite – The law “should not be changed to grant copyright protection to AI generated products” – falls into the other classic Luddite’s Weekly trap.

On the one hand they are claiming, and Altman himself agrees, that AI cannot do its work without copyrighted material, which as of now is defined as human-produced. And at the same time they are claiming copyright “is an exclusive right of human creators.”

Link to the rest at The New Publishing Standard

Who is going to receive the cash if a large publisher signs a license to utilize their books, magazine articles, photographs, etc.?

PG can’t speak for magazines and photographic publications, but, at least for ebooks, the authors are licensing their rights to publishers, not selling those rights. Arguably, under a standard trade publishing agreement, the author hasn’t given her/his publisher the right to use their books as grist for an AI mill. The traditional publisher typically has the right to print, publish, and sell the author’s works.

Granting permission for the author’s books to be utilized as fuel for an AI is something that was not foreseen when the author signed a publishing agreement. It is common for a publishing agreement that reserve rights not granted to the publisher for the author’s use so long as the exercise of those rights doesn’t interfere with the publisher printing, publishing, and selling the manuscript as a book of some sort or another.

Another issue that a great many large publishers will likely have is publishing agreements that were written and signed long before the internet, digital publishing, or anything except print, publish in a printed serial form, licensing as a Book-of-the-Month edition, etc.

And, of course, does the author’s literary agent get 15%?

Taylor-made deals: how artists are following Swift’s rights example

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From The Guardian:

A revolution is brewing in the music business as a new generation of female acts, following the example of Taylor Swift, are seizing ownership of their music rights and refusing to sign deals that cede complete control to music companies.

Swift is nearing the end of her project to re-record her first six albums – the ones originally made for Big Machine Records – as a putsch to highlight her claim that the originals had been sold out from under her: creative and commercial revenge served up album by album. Her public fight for ownership carried over to her 2018 deal with Republic Records, part of Universal Music Group (UMG), where an immovable condition was her owning her future master recordings and licensing them to the label.

It is a power-play template for younger acts who are now rising up – especially female pop stars, historically among the most exploited figures in music – alert to the fact that owning their recordings and songwriting is everything. Olivia Rodrigo made ownership of her own masters a precondition of signing with Geffen Records (also part of UMG) in 2020, citing Swift as a direct inspiration. In 2022, Zara Larsson bought back her recorded music catalogue and set up her own label, Sommer House. And in November 2023, Dua Lipa acquired her publishing from TaP Music Publishing, a division of the management company she left in early 2022.

At Glastonbury last summer, Rina Sawayama made a veiled jibe at the 1975’s Matty Healy for laughing at racist comments on a podcast and for the fact that he “owns my masters”, due to his directorship at Dirty Hit Limited (although his directorship was in fact terminated in April 2023). This claim about ownership skips over the complexities of contract law – Sawayama presumably having signed over the rights to her recordings in exchange for the label’s financial investment – but emotionally it plays to a fanbase who increasingly see “the industry” as the inherent enemy of art and creative autonomy. “The artists were creating those works, so really they should be owning them from an emotional point of view,” says Brian Message, a partner at Courtyard Management.

Artists today are more industry-literate and aware of the pitfalls and bear traps of the past, simply because they have to be. A multitude of older acts – perhaps most notably George Michael and Prince – had to take legal action over, in their eyes, being ripped off or badly exploited, while others such as Radiohead have made ownership of their rights in renegotiations an economic and moral mission. Some acts had prescient management on their side, with Bono recounting in his Surrender memoirs in 2022 that band manager Paul McGuinness negotiated with Island Records for U2 to take a lower advance and lower royalties as “it meant that at the end of a period of time we’d get back our rights and regain ownership of our recordings”.

Prince and George Michael are bleak warnings from history, but the moves by Swift, Rodrigo and others can stand as roadmaps for the future. It also means the music industry has had to adapt away from contracts based on ownership. There are two kinds of rights at stake here: the rights to the master recordings of an artist’s work, and songwriting rights, known as publishing. One senior music publishing executive says their part of the business was ahead of the curve, explaining that publishing deals tend to work on exclusive licensing terms or retention periods. “Publishers pivoted from a rights-ownership business to the servicing of rights,” they say. Those retention periods are getting shorter, they add, down from about 25 years three decades ago to between 12 and 15 years today.

David Martin, CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition, says there is “a propensity towards owning rights” for artists, but some acts are still prepared to sign away ownership for what they think might be their only shot at the big time. “We have members who are still signing major label deals,” he says. “Some of the terms in some of those deals are terms that we’d expect artists to be thinking very carefully about.”

Message says he steers acts away from ownership-based contracts. “We have a default position that we won’t advise our artists to do life-of-copyright deals,” he says. “It’s not that we wouldn’t do them, but our strong advice would always be to come up with a licence arrangement of some description.”

This is the ideological underpinning of BMG and AWAL (Artists Without a Label), which is now under the ownership of Sony Music Entertainment. “The philosophy is flipping the relationship,” says Alistair Norbury, president of repertoire and marketing at BMG UK. “There had to be a fairer and more transparent way to work with the creative community.”

Acts on BMG’s roster – notably Kylie Minogue, Suede, Sigur Rós and Louis Tomlinson – are on licensing or assignment deals, so ownership of the recordings eventually reverts to them. “They want to be with a record label where they have creative control and ownership coming back to them at some point,” says Norbury.

Link to the rest at The Guardian and thanks to C. for the tip.

PG says three cheers for musical artists who don’t give up rights forever.