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Coffee & Conversation: Contract Terms Series (Formats)

02 Monday Aug 2021

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Contract Terms Series (IANAL)

There’s a bunch of contract terms for writers that can be difficult to parse for newcomers to the genre, so I want to go over a few in a short, easy contract terms series.

(Note: I am not a lawyer. I am merely speaking from experience on the author side.)

FORMATS

When it comes to contracts, generally the more specific the better on the author’s side. Formats is one really good example of this, as often times contracts can make grabs for many formats without the publisher having any intention of using them.

Formats include all the different ways words can be published. Such as: paperback, hardback, audio, eBook, etc. These can be even more specific, for instance: mass market paperback vs trade paperback. And they can be incredibly generalized, for instance: multiple formats or any and all formats.

Most of the time when in contract negotiations, there is a specific type of format that the publisher wants. This could be an electronic format, for example; eEbook publication is generally the cheapest method of publication, taking the least out of a publishers finances. However, in case of a book doing particularly well, the publisher might want an option clause of some sort that claims other formats. For instance, they might request paperback rights for a particular period of time after they exercise their eBook format right in order to take advantage of a well-selling book.

Sometimes publisher contracts will request a dual format, with online and audio. This is often in the case of free online magazines.

Sometimes publisher contracts will request online rights with a limited time option for audio. Sometimes the publisher contracts could request eBook/electronic format, with an option to include the words/story in an end-of-year or best-of collection.

Please be careful signing anything that doesn’t give you any sort of compensation for extra formats if the option for them to be published in those formats is in the contract.

Also please be careful signing anything that vaguely gives away “multiple formats” in the contract. Seriously, who knows what they mean by that. And if the place specifies “first rights” in those “multiple formats” it can tie your hands up a lot in regards to future ways to sell the words. Even if the contract merely is reprint/non-exclusive rights for those “multiple formats,” this can cause problems for you if you try to sell first rights of a particular format elsewhere only to have the previous publisher decide they want to do it first. They have the right to do that because you signed that right to them (probably without compensation), and you will end up in breach of contract with the second publication.

So try to get your contracts to 1) be specific in what kind of formats they plan on publishing, and 2) explain the situation when extra formats will be published, and 3) document what your compensation will be if the option to publish in those extra formats are exercised.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: Contract Terms Series (First Rights)

26 Monday Jul 2021

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Contract Terms Series (IANAL)

There’s a bunch of contract terms for writers that can be difficult to parse for newcomers to the genre, so I want to go over a few in a short, easy contract terms series.

(Note: I am not a lawyer. I am merely speaking from experience on the author side.)

FIRST RIGHTS

First rights are essentially the right to first publication. This means that the words being licensed have never been published before in the specific way they are being sold. In other words: The words are not being reprinted. They are original.

There are many kinds of first rights, which is why it’s important to know and understand them. First rights also tend to be worth more than reprint rights, which is another reason they matter so much.

For instance: You can have first audio rights, which are different from first paperback rights. You can have first English rights, which is different than first Spanish rights. You can have first anthology rights, first eBook rights, first audio, etc.

Any contract that attempts to claim ALL first rights, particularly without actually having any intention of using all those first rights, should be contested and requested to have a rewording.

By allowing a particular contract access to all first rights without them having clauses giving those rights back to you, you can end up with a story that can never be published in certain formats. Which is not cool.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What do writers sell?

19 Monday Jul 2021

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What do writers sell?

Writers sell licenses. That’s it. Or at least that should be it.

Writers OWN copyright. But writers should not be SELLING copyright. Copyright is ownership. It’s the “these words are mine and no, you can’t use them without my permission” bit.

So when writers sign contracts, they aren’t signing away copyright; they’re signing away the license, or right, to use, disseminate, print, or publish those words. The words themselves remain belonging to the writer.

There are a few places (actually, there are many more than a few places, unfortunately) that have awful contracts where the author actually does sign away copyright, giving all the words they’d written to a company. There are even places that demand ownership of your publishing name, disallowing a writer to publish under that particular name anywhere but with that company. [Please don’t sign these.]

The only time you should, as a writer, be selling copyright, is when you are ghostwriting (because during ghostwriting you’re paid a lump sum to writer someone else’s story for them, so they get the copyright of it) or during some form of shared-world ownership situation. (Think DnD, DragonLance, Forgotten Realms, TV show tie-ins, though even then, very often, the copyright remains with the author and they simply have incredibly strict contracts on what they’re allowed to write).

So please check your contracts over carefully! Make sure you’re not giving away something you shouldn’t be, particularly in smaller press or magazines where the publishers might not be fully aware of what they’re asking for.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: Removing large-scale defaults in my work

31 Monday May 2021

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Removing large-scale defaults in my work

I feel like who I am as a writer is always in flux. Which I think is a really good thing and I hope I always keep pushing myself. These are just a few ways that aspects of my writing have moved beyond a norm I’d instinctively set for myself.

Perspective

There was a time when every story I wrote was in third person perspective. Everything. I didn’t even consider writing in first person because I didn’t tend to like first person stories as much. You can get pretty close to a character even in third person, so I never thought much about it. There was even an interview I read by another author who said she only wrote in first person because she didn’t think she could get as close in third and I thought…”how silly” and “I would hate to only write in first.”

Slowly, I’ve gone beyond third person. I’ve written plenty of stories in first and even in second person (though I’m still iffy on doing whole novels in second because you need to have a really good reason for it). When I sit down to write a new story, I’m far more likely to truly consider perspective and decide which one will be best for the story I want to tell rather than default to the one I use the most often.

Setting

I also used to only write secondary world/high fantasy or distant science-fiction. I still default to distant time science-fiction if I write sci-fi because near future seems synonymous with hard science-fiction to a lot of people and I’m much more of a “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…” and “who cares if it’s impossible” type of writer. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What was your last attempt to try something entirely new in your writing?

24 Monday May 2021

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What was your last attempt to try something entirely new in your writing?

Last year, wanting to try something I’m not skilled at, I decided to try writing a story in objective voice. Objective voice is essentially when you’re not allowed to see the world through any character eyes and instead are forced to view the story solely from an outside perspective. Basically, it’s like watching the events happen, but being unable to hop into anyone’s mind to get clarification on what they were thinking or feeling.

It’s HARD. OMG.

All the emotion a person feels, all the thoughts they have…GONE.

All you have is what they do, what they say. You’re basically trying to be as objective as possible in even the description of the setting. It felt like I was just saying “He went there. He did this.” over and over again. I kept wanting to sink into the character and give them a voice, an opportunity to say what they felt.

It was so awful.

I hated it.

I…don’t know if I’ll try it again. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Do you finish everything you start?

17 Monday May 2021

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Do you finish everything you start?

My half a million WIPS say no :P

Okay, in all seriousness, the answer is yes, if we’re talking projects I’ve truly started. However, projects tend to fall into one of three categories:

1) The I-started-but-can’t-figure-out-what-to-do-with-it

This is the category of stories where I’ve jotted a beginning, maybe even got a few pages in, or, in one horrible rare case, I’d gotten chapters in, and realized I have no idea what’s going on. Or I realize that the story is fundamentally broken. Or I realize that the character makes no sense. Mostly though I realize that I was just writing to write and that there isn’t really a story here.

These ones feel more like writing exercises. I’m stretching my brain, I’m doing a little character creation or description or jotting down part of a dream I had. I like doing this sometimes with dialogue between two characters because of the fun it is to play people off one another.

A lot of these get lost amidst the world of notebooks. But often enough, some of these jotted creations will find new life later when I’m flipping through old notebooks and see something that gets my gears going.

2) The I-started-and-immediately-finished

These are the ones I wish happened every time. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What writing website do you visit the most?

10 Monday May 2021

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What writing website do you visit the most?

There are a lot of great sites out there for writing-related topics. Some of them are kept up by writers who have been in the industry for a long time. Some of them are kept up by people with almost no experience or knowledge (looking at you, random youtubers who pretend to be grade A agents or successful authors yet have no examples of their work).

But for the most part, at some point, whether you realize it or not, advice sites are a sinkhole rather than a help.

The absolute best writing site I’ve found is called: 4the words.com.

I remember writing about a site called Fighter’s Bloc before, but if you aren’t aware of what it was, it was a site crafted where you fight a little monster by finishing words. Every time you stopped writing, your avatar took damage. Too much damage, you die. But if you go until you accomplish your target word count, you win!

4thewords is a similar site, except in all way better. It essentially gamifies writing.

You have an avatar you can customize. A map you can travel through. A quest book. There’s a main story line. Side quests. Basically anything you tend to see in an easy app game, this site has crafted. Your job is to travel into the wilderness and battle monsters, each with a different target goal and different drops, leading you to craft better weapons, better armor, etc.

There’s also an Inn that works as a forum, but I really don’t recommend going there. Forums are time dumps generally. Ignore them as best you can. I’ve never actually read a single post on 4thewords and haven’t started my own despite there being a quest to do to because that’s not the purpose I want for my account.

On the writing side, the site allows you to create as many files as you want, which you can organize into different projects. Each project can be divided into different sections, holding whatever files you need. All the files and projects can be customized, by color and shape, allowing you to easily see at a glance the files you’re looking for.

In terms of actual productivity, the monsters you battle each give a different incentive. Some are word count battles, where you are given a certain amount of time to accomplish a certain amount of words. For instance, the Wignow makes you write 250 words in a 30 minute time frame. Each monster is a different type of challenge, some giving you a relaxed time frame, some giving you a tighter one. There are also monsters who are endurance battles, more similar to the little 2-bit monsters you would have battled on Figher’s Bloc. These fights are really good for brainstorming sessions or dumping sessions where you’re just trying to get words out in order to push yourself into the zone.

All in all, I find the site really helpful as a writer :)

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What traits do you think lead to success?

03 Monday May 2021

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What traits do you think lead to success?

The traits that I feel are most important to success in the writing industry are: social acuity, endurance, and thick-skin. Keep in mind that my own success is debatable, depending on your definition of success and that most of this is from what I’ve observed within the industry.

1) Thick-skin

There are a lot of rejections in this industry. Some of these rejections are impersonal, leading some people to feel downtrodden because they don’t feel like they’re being read or considered. They don’t feel like they’re even getting a person on the other end. So the rejections feel automated.

Some of the rejections are personal, which can feel even more personal depending on what’s said. Some point out flaws in a particular story, while others point out flaws in writing ability. While still others might even go as far as pointing out potential flaws in the author themselves. And these are all, generally, from strangers across the world, people who you have no idea whether they have the training to be saying what they say or even if they’re someone whose opinion should be taken.

Not only do you get told NO a lot, but we also get reviews. Reviews can be sweet and wonderful and the best things in the world. Or they can be downright cruel, some of them going as far as deriding the author instead of the work.

On top of rejections and reviews, many authors seek out critiques in order to try and improve. Some people can handle critiques. Some people can’t. [Also, some people give helpful critiques and some people…don’t.] Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What’s your take on copyright law? (2 of 2)

26 Monday Apr 2021

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What’s your take on copyright law?

Last week, I began talking about copyright law, what it is, generally how it works, and compared the intellectual property to other types of property so it would be clear that we are, in fact, talking property.

Now, I would like to explain why certain people dislike the length of time the copyright lasts:

1) They hate big corps like Disney who use their copyright to force people not to use their characters, their movies, etc. Companies as big as Disney are happy to tackle anyone who breathes near their copyright (if you try to sell T-shirts with Jiminiy Cricket on them, for example).

2) Many people presume all authors are rich

3) Many people presume books/words only make money in the first few years of being sold/published.

4) Some people just want free shit. They hate paying for anything and think they’re entitled to anything anyone else works hard on (like the “this is mine” meme)

Let me address each of these in turn. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What’s your take on copyright? (1 of 2)

19 Monday Apr 2021

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What’s your take on the current copyright law?

This is based on the law in the United States.

There’s this persistent, nefarious belief that authors should not be allowed to hold copyright of their work for any decent length of time (the going argument is copyright should only last 20-30 years after publication). I hope, rather than know, that these beliefs are only held by a loud, uneducated minority, but since there’s probably a lot of misunderstanding concerning copyright, I wanted to talk about it.

Let’s first talk about what copyright is:

Copyright is the ownership of one’s words (or other creation). In the United States, copyright lasts for 70 years after the author’s death. [There are other, slightly different, time frames when doing things like work-for-hire, etc.] For the sake of this post and the next, I will be talking about copyright mostly from the perspective of writing.

You gain copyright of your words the moment you write them. Not when you register a copyright, not when you show your words to anyone, not even when a book is published. Your copyright is yours the moment you write those words. They could be on a napkin. Or a piece of fabric. Or even written on a wall. Doesn’t matter. They are yours. Continue reading →