CYA – Lesson One

If you’re a writer, you’re working with contracts (and if you’re not working with a contract, shame on you!). I keep some standard ones handy for clients who are without, but when a client sends you one of their contracts, please please PLEASE read it carefully. I mean it. If you skim that sucker, you’re going to miss something important. I speak from experience.

Read it through. Pay attention to specific areas. The description of the work should be exactly as described to you by the client. If not, question it before you sign. After you sign, it’s too late.

Another area of attention – payment terms. If you look at it quickly and say “Oh! A dollar a word; cool!” you may be missing some key terminology that could end up costing you. Case in point – I once worked with a teen magazine, which shall remain nameless but no less loathed by me. I was sent the contract after the editor said she wanted to purchase only the sidebar to the story I’d submitted because she felt the story lacked something. No problem – she was paying me $150 for the sidebar. The entire story was worth a lot more, but I was still free to resell that portion.

The contract came and the payment terms stated I’d be paid $150 for “minimum 250 words” for the “sidebar.” Imagine my surprise when I came across that magazine in a store a few months later and the entire article had been printed. I figured it was an oversight by the editor, so I contacted her by mail. Twice. And called her. Twice. By the fourth communication, I knew she wasn’t calling back. I pulled out that contract and prepared to threaten her with her own signature. Alas, there was that phrase “minimum 250 words.” That word “minimum” was the deal-killer. Because of that one word I’d originally overlooked, I lost a significant amount of cash, for it allowed that editor to take the entire article that was “lacking something” and print it verbatim, which she did (and the jerk didn’t even give me credit on the stupid sidebar). My last communication with her was a note to her superior, copying her, letting them know how displeased I was. I also included copies of our correspondence that showed the editor had indeed said one thing and had done another – to no avail. The superior gave me just as much attention as the editor did.

My bad. Live and learn. And yes, shame on them for being such skunks (and this was a BIG magazine, folks). In the end, I had nothing but my signature to terrible terms and one letter stating other terms. Please – learn from my mistakes. Look for those vague terms, such as “minimum”, “maximum” and any unclear or undefined descriptions or terminology. In a current contract, I saw the project length described as “1500 to 2000” and you can bet I wrote in “words” behind it. No way do I want to get paid a mere $2,000 to write a 2,000-page tome!