Why Above the Dotted Line?
By Denise Gibbon
My lawyer life has always been punctuated by problems authors have with writing and publishing contracts. My reviews of those contracts often reveal what those authors most fear – that what they had regarded as unjust or a breach by the other party is allowed under the contract. Frequently, those same clients have neither read the contract nor engaged an attorney, literary agent, or other publishing professional to explain it to them before they signed it.
Why do so many authors do this? Denise Gibbon Playing the “Contract Sport”
Most authors and self-publishers fear that if they read the contract and ask questions, the other party who offered them the contract might call off the deal and make completion of a promising manuscript and eventual publication less likely. As a result, for many authors, signing a writing or publishing contract is more important than understanding the terms above the signature …