I guess i should start off with saying that any moderator can feel free to move this is I've placed this in the wrong section. I've come pretty close to getting a series published and the reason i'm holding off is because i'm worried about the ownership. The entire saga is my original creation and I've been holding off because I'm worried that the firm I've selected may fight me for ownership of the material. I'm barely making ends meat right now and the last thing i want to do is hand over my I.P to someone else
What kind of firm are we talking about? A literary agency? A publishing house? Some other third thing? I'm by no means an expert, but in the contract somewhere there should be a list of rights that the firm is seeking to buy from you. Usually these will be listed as publishing rights, distribution rights, and stuff like that. There should also be a neat little addendum underneath these all that say something to the effect of "all rights not explicitly stated are retained by the author." This means that if in the contract they don't explicitly state they want the rights to something and what that entails, you automatically keep those rights. There are lots of other parts to this, too, so I agree with @ChickenFreak that if there's something about it you don't understand, then you should probably talk to either a lawyer or an agent about it.
Going to chime in with if you have a contract with "the firm I've selected." Your rights should be clearly be spelled out in any contract and if not you should definitely pump the brakes.
Are you going to be paying this firm to do the publishing for you? If so, that's generally called vanity publishing and is almost certainly a bad idea. What firm is it?
Generally in a trad deal they would buy your rights from you (not necessarily all of them depending on the contract - JK Rowling for examle famously kept Ebook rights to Harry potter but sold the Print rights) for a (potentially small) advance and a cut of the royalties. Its not necessarily the IP in the sense that you remain identified as the creator, but they are paying you for the right to exclusively print your work. In a proper deal no one should be fighting anyone for the ownership of the material as which rights are covered by the deal and for how long should be covered in the contract No money should flow from you to them. If you are paying them upfront it's what we call vanity publishing , and is probably a bad idea (some vanity contracts also grab all rights which is ridiculous). In self publishing there are legit companies like draft to digital and smashwords who will help you distribute your book across numerous sales channels in return for a cut of the royalties (generally about 10% of cover price ) , plus of course Amazon and co also take a cut ... but in these cases the rights stay with you, you are merely signing over some of the royalties for their sales and distribution. Again no money should go from you to them up front
I disagree. Paying a lawyer to review the agreement while wearing proper eye protection would be slightly safer. Also, if you are worried about making ends meet, maybe letting a friend who's a paralegal or something similar might help save some money. While less qualified to tell you exactly what going on with it, they would have the skills to tell you if it's written poorly or demanding anything extraordinary, or further the advise of letting a lawyer look at it and given your relationship, may cost you anywhere between a favour to lunch and a couple of beers.
I'm not sure a paralegal (or a standard lawyer, one who doesn't specialize in intellectual property or publishing law) is going to know enough about what's standard in the business and what's to be avoided. That is, they'd know what the contract says, but wouldn't be able to place the contract in a larger context.
Yes. They can read the terms of the agreement (though so can a layman often) but there will be some things they don’t know (and are aware they don’t know and can point out the lack of knowledge) and other things they don’t know that they don’t know and can’t point out. Depending on the complexity of the contract, that can be a real problem and very hard to deal with after the fact.
Which is why they shouldn't be used as a replacement for a lawyer, but would be able to help you know if it's worth taking to a lawyer at all.
Well, only in the sense of, "This is so horrible you shouldn't even consider signing it," IMO. If the OP considers signing the agreement, they should get a lawyer with experience in this area of business.
OP, the above phrasing was pointed out in another post, and it is worrying. If you've selected a firm, that suggests self-publishing. In self-publishing, the firm should have essentially zero rights. If a firm that you've selected is claiming rights, that sounds like vanity publishing. Vanity publishing is always bad.
I think it's interesting that people here are okay with someone asking the internet, that doesn't have legal training, about legal matters, and people here are okay with others with no legal training are giving answers to these questions, but asking someone that has a modicum of legal training, even if they're not a lawyer for help understanding a legal document is just a complete no go.
Who said it's a no go? It's just insufficient. And who said legal answers on the internet are fine? My view is that if the matter is important, you talk to a lawyer. Period.
Fair enough, my point also that it wasn't sufficient, but if you didn't have 200$ for an hour of a lawyers time, then giving it to someone like that could help, even if it's to say, 'this is too complex for me,' or 'here's where you sign away all rights, it was hiding under this banana sticker next to the part about indentured servitude,' and author would have a better, more trained opinion on whether that 200$ is really worth it. Apparently I really suck at communicating today.
Thing about a paralegal, they’re not supposed to give legal advice and there is no attorney-client privilege, which can be important in some circumstances.
Sure, yeah, that sounds fine. It's pretty much what I meant when I said that the paralegal might make sense for the "This is so horrible you shouldn't even consider signing it," possibility. If the paralegal results in a 'no', you've saved money. If the paralegal leans toward a 'yes', then you should go to a lawyer and you might have wasted the money on the paralegal--or you might still be ahead, because your conversation with the expensive lawyer might be more focused and therefore shorter.
Attorney-client privilege is there so that if you did commit a crime or have a crippling secret fear of sock puppets you don't want the general public to know about you can admit to it so that your attorney can prepare a proper legal defense for you based on all information without the fear of your lawyer being strong armed into providing testimony against you later. So probably best to not admit to anything you wouldn't otherwise admit to while you're chatting.
This makes me wonder what constitutes legal advice. Is "Based on this clause, signing this agreement would mean that you are selling your copyright for fourteen cents..." legal advice, or does it only become legal advice at, "...and that would be unwise."?
Interpreting the contract would probably constitute giving legal advice. There’s a certain amount of gray between what paralegals can do and what crosses into giving actual legal advice. When you tell someone what a clause in a contract means you’re telling them what the legal effect of that clause would be, which would be unauthorized practice of law by a paralegal, and good paralegals know it and aren’t likely to give such advice.
