Get a look at a big time author’s contract — OJ Simpson’s
By Kent Larsen | 1.23.07
For those who want to see the kind of contracts that big time authors end up with will probably want to see this. Because of a lawsuit, OJ Simpson’s authors contract for his recent book, signed with HarperCollins, is available online.
Any author who wonders how fair their contracts are should be interested in comparing their contract with what a big name author can get, especially because (we assume) Simpson would have expert copyright attorneys looking at the contract to give him the most protection and the best deal.
I got a look at the contract through the Grumpy Old Bookman blog, which reported that the contract was available. I’m happy to report that the contract is structured similarly to others I’ve seen among New York publishers, and the terms don’t seem to be too different from what I’ve put into my own contracts.
Of course, I haven’t gone over it in detail. No doubt many of you authors out there will want to get a look at this one. I hope it helps in your own negotiations with publishers.
1.26.07 | 12:59 am | comment permalink |
Unfortunately, the contract seems to have been printed on legal-sized paper and the PDF is letter-sized, so part of each page is cut off. Still it’s interesting. A question: am I reading correctly that if the books are sold in channels other than the book trade (gifts, remainders, etc.) the author’s royalties are based on the net received rather than the cover price? So if a publisher sells a $20 book to a large trade wholesaler at a 50% discount the author gets $2 royalty, but if the book is sold to a gift wholesaler at a 51% discount the author gets $.98 per copy? If so, the publisher does very well to sell to anyone other than the book trade, even at larger discounts. Right?
1.26.07 | 10:29 pm | comment permalink |
Buck, I think you are misreading this contract.
As I read it, they mean the change at 50% (actually the change is at their “announced discount” which we presume to be 50%, but could conceivably be 55% or even 60%) regardless of channel. So, yes, sales at 50% are a $2 royalty per copy, and sales at 51% are $0.98, as long as those sales are either made on a non-returnable basis or are considered “special sales”
In my experience this is the case in contracts with most large trade publishers. I’ve also seen contracts from Henry Holt & Co. (part of the group that owns St. Martins Press), Bantam Doubleday Dell (now part of Random House), and children’s book publisher North South Books. All these companies had similar clauses in this respect.
The idea here is there comes a point at which the discount is so high that the publisher isn’t making much money at all on the sale. Because the publisher isn’t likely to make these sales (and doesn’t unless the quantities are large enough) and because they are nearly unprofitable, the publisher wants the author to “share the lower margins.”
It is an abrupt drop, and some contracts drop the rate more gradually (for example, 1/2% for every additional 1% of discount).
In practice it isn’t very worrysome because Publishers don’t normally sell books at these discounts. The average author will never see such sales on the statement. More likely, the author will see a ‘remainder’ sale on which he gets no royalties.