A Freelancer's Survival Guide to Maximizing Your Success by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WMG Publishing

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1. Contracts are complex legal documents.

Some are complex and incomprehensible by design. The harder it is for the layman to understand the contract, the more chances there are for that layman to get screwed. There is nothing simple about a contract. Even simple two- and three-line contracts have pitfalls in them—usually through something that’s been omitted. Just because a contract looks simple doesn’t mean that it is.

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2. Every word in the contract is important. Each section is there for a reason.

Dean and I get into fascinating arguments about publishing contracts over this very point. Dean went to law school. He knows that some clauses in publishing contracts are completely unenforceable, so he sees no problem in signing a contract with the illegal, unenforceable clause.

I always remember the second part of two: Each section is there for a reason. So if the lawyers who drew up the contract knew that the clause was unenforceable (and if a guy who went to law school but never became a practicing attorney knows that a certain clause is unenforceable, then guaranteed the lawyer who put the clause in knew it as well), the question becomes: Why did the lawyers put the clause into the contract?

Usually, in publishing (and I can’t say this about other industry’s contracts with certainty), those clauses are there to make the ignorant do something. In the publishing contract, the ignorant one is the writer. So, the clause is often to the publishing company’s benefit and it demands that the writer do something that isn’t in the writer’s best interest. The writer doesn’t have to do that thing, because the clause is unenforceable under the contract. But I can guarantee you that if that clause is in the contract, then some writer followed “the rules” set forth by the contract, even to the writer’s detriment.

So remember, everything in the contract is there for a reason—even if that reason is only to force compliance on someone who doesn’t know any better.

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