Agreement with Licence or Assignment?The type of author agreement you need will depend, to a large extent, upon the kind of publishing you are involved in.
The types of author agreement used by trade publishers usually involve a licence of copyright from authors, whereas the types of author agreement used by many educational, professional and academic publishers involve an assignment of copyright.
A licence of rights is a permission: a permission to do things that would otherwise infringe those rights. By contrast, an assignment of rights is a transfer of ownership of those rights. An exclusive licence of rights can be so comprehensive that its effect is more-or-less the same as the effect of an assignment of copyright.
Note that moral rights cannot usually be licensed or assigned (although they can be waived).
An important difference between those author agreement templates on this site that contain a licence of copyright and those author agreement templates that contain an assignment of copyright is that, upon termination of the author agreement, rights that are licensed return to the author whereas rights that have been assigned will remain with the publishing company.
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Royalty or Fee Based Agreement?Authors are usually paid by way of a fee or a royalty. Where payment is by way of royalty, there will often be an advance as well.
The percentage royalty will vary with the method of exploitation. For instance, authors may get a higher percentage for digital exploitation than for paper copies. In the past, royalties, at least for trade publications, were usually a percentage of the book's cover price. These days it is much more common to see royalties calculated as a percentage of the publishing company's net receipts.
Instead of a royalty, an author will sometimes be paid a fee. Fees can be linked to particular publishing milestones.
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Premium, Standard or Basic Agreement?We supply three different "levels" of author agreement: premium agreements, standard agreements and basic agreements.
The standard author agreements incorporate all of the clauses of the basic authors agreements, with various additions; likewise, the premium author contracts incorporate all the clauses of the standard agreement documents, with various additions.
In addition to the provisions in the basic agreement templates, the standard agreement templates include provisions in respect of: several authors, indices, amendments to the book, brand new editions of the book, remaindering, Copyright Licensing Agency licences, ownership of IPR in book titles, termination of the contract where a book is out-of-print, and the service of contractual notices.
In addition to the clauses in the standard template agreements, the premium agreements include clauses concerning: copyright infringement proceedings, liability exclusions and limitations (for the benefit of the publisher), an option in relation to the author's future works, payments made direct to literary agents, termination of the author agreement upon the change of control of the publishing company, the extra-judicial resolution of disputes (ADR) and the marketing of the book.
The premium templates also have an index.
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