A contract is the only thing that stands between a writer and a host of publishing disasters.
For that reason, as well as because we also see value in transparency, we wanted to give you some details about our contracts.
We split our profits with the author 50/50. From our side come all expenses except the printing costs for the books we sell. We cover all other expenses with the exception that if we see an opportunity for a book that requires the spending of money not in our budget, we may ask the author whether they want to share this expense with us. So far, we haven’t used this clause.
We buy worldwide English rights for a certain time period, usually a year right now, but this may change in the future. Our main concern would be an author pulling their book away from us at a catastrophic moment. We also ask for audiobook rights. (We would take this clause out if the author preferred not to sell us these rights.) All other rights stay with the author. In the future, for some books, we may inquire about other rights.
Rights revert to the author if the publisher goes bankrupt or dies.
The contract survives the death of either party (because if it didn’t none of the clauses that say what will happen on death would matter.)
If the author dies, the proceeds and the contract are heritable. This means that the author’s heirs or estate can choose to leave the book with us or exercise the author’s right to terminate according to the terms of the contract. (After the allotted time has passed, by giving 30 days’ notice.)
These terms are all in our basic contract. As we grow, we hope to add beneficial terms to the contracts.
For more about how we run our publishing, see our ethos page