Re: university press rights assignment

[Karl Bridges <Karl.Bridges@uvm.edu>]

It's nice that they ask, but I can't see that you're obligated to 
go along.  You might note that there is no suggestion of any 
additional fees or royalties.  Before you agree to this let me 
ask you -- would you have written the book originally for free?

Bottom line, the publisher signed a contract with you and that 
existing contract is binding.  It's unfortunate, for them, that 
they didn't anticipate electronic publishing, but that's hardly 
your problem.  Professional writers get paid. End of story.

Karl Bridges
Associate Professor
Information and Instruction Services
Bailey Howe Library
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT  05405
802-656-8132
karl.bridges@uvm.edu


Quoting "James J. O'Donnell" <jod@georgetown.edu>:

> I have a letter before me from an American University press 
> (not one that has published any book I have authored) that asks 
> its authors to supplement their existing contracts signed 
> before 1996 by signing an addendum.  They need some such 
> addendum in order to be sure they do have the rights to digital 
> distribution necessary if they want to make deals to distribute 
> e-versions through Amazon, B&N, Google, and the like.
>
> Here's the text:
>
> "The Author grants and assigns exclusively to the Press for the 
> full term of the copyright . . . inclusion in electronic 
> storage and retrieval systems; production, publication, and 
> exhibition in computer software; and any other rights not 
> specifically enumerated in any media and technology now known 
> or hereafter invented."
>
> Now the old-fashioned book contracts that many of us have 
> signed over the years had a nice out-clause:  if the publisher 
> lets the book go out of print and it stays out of print for 
> more than six months, then the author has the right to claim 
> back all assigned rights just by asking.  I in fact did this 
> with a book I published with Oxford University Press in 1992, 
> and the full (originally three-volume) work is now available on 
> my website free of charge for scholars to use.  (OUP later did 
> turn up wanting to reprint it, and discovered they had to ask 
> *my* permission, which I was happy to give.)
>
> But this addendum essentially signs away the farm forever (ok, 
> life plus 75 years, but I regard a date falling somewhere at or 
> with luck after the turn of the *next* century as forever from 
> now for me) -- all electronic rights in any medium now known or 
> to be invented between now and c. 2100 AD, in perpetuity, 
> exclusively to a Press whose own corporate and physical 
> survival to that date is *scarcely* guaranteed.
>
> This seems to me to give a *lot* more to publishers than 
> they've had.  I'd like to hear suggestions as to what a 
> reasonable such addendum might be like -- give publishers 
> enough to let them make a business plan for e-versions while 
> retaining useful rights for authors.  Progress in that 
> direction is occurring in other areas such as journal articles: 
> how now to get the best arrangement here?
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Georgetown University