Contracts:

This is a panel from one of the Life the Universe and Everything symposiums. Any inaccuracies or misinformation in any of these notes is the fault of the note taker.

Ask what warranties are in the contract?
Make sure that when you sell your warranty you include the phrase ‘to the best of the office knowledge vows protect the author.’
Publishers should know the laws
Anthologies: define prorated share get specifics if the payment is by word or by the number of stories and term limits.
For a movie contract, hire a movie attorney. They charge $500 an hour
They cut out the crap of the contract and send’s it back to the agent. The agent then returned the back to the movie studio. In the contact is fine to permit to rewrites but more than two is unreasonable. Only California and New York have agents who have rules to follow
Don’t have a contract for ever. You always need to contact that has next clause.
An author gives six points for movie script entry points per TV script. When you have six points join the script field because they provide legal advice. Often the producer may be willing to pay the 3K entry fee. SFFA organization has samples of contracts that we can look at
Always be willing to walk away from a contract.
You need to know what questions to ask a lawyer
If you do work for a publisher, you my ask them if you can be on their insurance policy
The more clout you have more control you have to negotiate your contract
We need to use the right language on the nuisance clause. This is when some past will say that the author plagiarized in the publisher will just pay a go way she and then will charge that fee the author
Live up to your contract.
Small publishers, likely to have bad contracts. Sometimes they download them off the web. And don’t know that they are bad contracts
Rights need to be specific
For your short works give time limits of use and certain republishing rights.
You always keep the film rights never give them up