So You Want to Start a Zine Pt. 7

The Importance of Having Contracts

First off, we can all agree that you're paying the author? Good. If you're paying the author, then you need a contract. Why? It provides a layer of protection for yourself and the author. With a contract, you can set the terms for publication. For example, whether the author can seek to publish elsewhere before you do and what type of rights you obtain from the author. it also guarantees to the author that you will pay them $X dollars for their story or that you will publish it by such-and-such a date or they can take the story elsewhere.

I use a fairly simple contract that leaves as many of the rights to the author and reverts their rights back to them upon publication of the story. I'm not big enough and I don't pay NEARLY enough money to consider doing anything more. John Scalzi explains why obtaining more rights for the mere pittance that most short markets pay is ludicrous.

Here's a quick look at the first page of my contract (which I base on an example I received from Jeff VanderMeer):

(Click on the image for a full-size view)

This page sets up who the publisher and author are, what is being acquired by the publisher, and for what terms. I do ask for three months of exclusivity on the piece, but the author can use the piece to promote his or herself or the issue that the story is in. Three months is a fairly short period of time for me to hold exclusive First North American Serial Rights. The author could publish the work in England or Australia (or anywhere not in North America) and could also publish in a non-serial venue (e.g., an anthology) without waiting the three months. Also, my contract states the three months without permission of the author. If something hot came up for the author and they asked me about it, I'd likely grant them permission to use the piece elsewhere. It hasn't happened yet, but now that I've posted this, it'll happen with the next issue.

Here's the second page of the contract:

(Click on the image for a full-size view)

There's a statement that I'll do everything I can to promote the issue this story appears in. And I do that. There's a little section for Iowa law (you can see that I didn't update the file from when I moved so that 'state' appeared on the final copy) essentially stating that I am following all of Iowa's laws when it comes to publishing. The next part says that both the author and I will hold each other accountable for the terms agreed upon in the contract. And finally I provide a date by which I'll publish the story. Since I make contracts an issue at a time, this isn't normally a problem, but if something happened and I couldn't get the issue out, the author would be free of our agreement by the time that date came if the story hadn't been published.

I send two signed copies to the author. They sign both and send one back to me. That way we each have a signed copy of the contract. I do not ask for SSN# or tax id since I do not pay anyone more than $600 for a story where I would need to generate a 1099 form for them (unlike the anthology I edited). I suspect if you're reading these posts, you also won't be paying your authors more than $600 a story. Regardless, it will be up to you and your author to report payments and earnings on your taxes as they apply.

That's about it. Now, here's where it gets a little difficult. I have two half-formed zine series posts (one on time management, i.e., when to be editing, when to be laying out, when to go crazy; and another on editing), what should I write about next? What haven't I covered that people want to read about? Is there anything people want more detail about?

Here are links to two different MS Word contract templates; one for zines and one for anthologies:

Zine Contract
Anthology Contract