 How many of you know what a work for hire contract is? Are you familiar with that? Okay, many of you are, but not all of you. Okay, close the door. Okay, so many of you are not familiar with what a work for hire contract is. Is that true? Thank you. Okay, so we're not going to answer it now. We'll cover it. How many of you know what reversion of rights means or want to book those out of print? Okay, so not all of you. And how many of you know what it means to register, to have a translation registered in your name? I know there's a copyrightist for you. Are you familiar with some copyright issues? Okay, great. So what we're proposing to do today is go through the model contract that the Penn Transition Committee has just recently updated in last spring. But this is an ongoing project, and actually I just learned very recently from Marion Schwartz, who goes back a while that maybe it's, the initial model contract was from the 1980s or so, or earlier, or earlier. Okay, so this has been a matter of concern for the Penn Transition Committee for a while. And I also want to refer to something that Marion Schwartz said in an email that we exchanged, and I think this is pretty much our point of departure, is that all contracts are by definition negotiable. So what we, or at least how I see this model contract, the scenario, when you offered a deal to publish your translation, congratulations, it's great, typically the publisher is going to provide you with the contract. It's not your role to send the model contract to the publisher, that may happen, who knows. But it's at that point when you get the contract, we think that you can very usefully turn to the model contract and see and compare them. And maybe as for some clarification, or maybe some negotiating points that you do want to insist upon, we think that there is some point you should really insist upon. Okay. All right, so are we ready to go? Are there any other points that we need to make, Alex? Well, just that I would say is an introductory point, that we have a website, penn.org, slash translation, and this contract is available online there. So you can also refer publishers to it, editors to it, anybody else. Yeah, and you could also Google model contract, penn. I think it comes up as the first hit. Okay, so we're going to go through these provisions here, and then we thought that maybe we'll go through, and then at the end we could take questions and we could discuss this and share experiences with you and you can share experiences with us. Okay, is that a good idea? Okay, so, I mean, the introduction is very... A lot of this is border plate. Sort of like the basics, the preamble, that you're establishing, that you're translating the work from X language into English, and we'll deliver the translation to the publisher on a before X. The next section. Publisher agrees not to make any changes to the final approved version of the translation, except for copy editing, to conform with publisher's standard style of punctuation, spelling and capitalization. Publisher will send translated the copy edited manuscript or the translation, and translator agrees to provide any revisions or corrections within X weeks of receipt. Very standard, but there can be variations on that. Does someone else want to... No one to read it? Sure, the translator represents and warns to the publisher that no material of an objectionable or libelist character not present in the original work will be introduced into the translation. Subject to this representation, the publisher hereby indemnifies and holds the translator harmless against all suits, claims, causes of action, expenses or costs of any kind, including legal fees arising out of the content of the original work. Publisher will cover translator with respect to any lawsuits arising from the publication of the translation under any publisher's liability insurance policy covering such risks as defamation, invasion of privacy, and copyright and trademark infringement the publisher has that covers any lawsuit, the policy. I don't think that's normally a particularly disputed clause of my experience anyway. Yeah, that's pretty standard. The translator shall receive in advance of X dollars for the translation payable as follows. The translator shall receive X dollars upon signature of this contract by both parties, and the remainder due shall be paid upon delivery of the completed translation. Okay, yeah, we're definitely going to come back to that one. Should I keep reading? Let's do one more. In addition, the translator shall receive a royalty of X percent on all sales of the book based on the retail list price of the hardcover edition. The translator shall also receive a royalty of X percent on all paperback sales of the book based on the retail sales price of the paperback edition and its net sales. Translator shall receive an amount equal to X percent of publishers net receipts from sales of the translation in electronic form. Publisher will pay translator an amount equal to X percent of subsidiary rights income from all sources. The publisher shall receive accounting statements from the publisher under the same schedule as for the original author. This one is heavily negotiable. The translator's name shall appear on the cover and title page of all editions of the book and in all publicity an advertising copy released by the publisher wherever the author's name appears in a type size, not smaller than 60 percent of that for the author's name. This is in the realm of fantasy here. Publisher agrees to print translator's approved biography on the back flap of the hardcover edition on the back cover of any trade paperback edition of the translation and the title page of any electronic edition. I will just say that you always have something you need to negotiate with. You may find some things in here that you can negotiate with. On first publication of the English translation the publisher shall give the translator 10 free copies of each edition of the work and the translator may purchase additional copies from the publisher at a discount of 50 percent from the retail price. The translator shall have the right no more than once per calendar year to examine publisher's books, records and agreements relevant to the translation at translator's expense. Notwithstanding the foregoing if such audit reveals accounting errors of at least 5 percent of the amount sued to translator then publisher will reimburse translator for the cost of the audit and the amount due as a result of the audit within 30 days thereafter. Okay now this is a big one. Publisher agrees to register the translation of the work and the translator's name and the translator grants to publisher the full term of copyright and all renewals and extensions thereof the sole and exclusive right to reproduce, publish and sell the translation in whole or in part throughout the world. And then the next clause is absolutely essential to have with number nine the copyright is registered in your name you're assigning the right to do the book to the publisher when the book was out of print you want the rights to come back to you and you need this next clause this is standard reversion clause this is the out of print situation if at any time the rights to the work revert to the author then the rights to the translation shall at the same time automatically revert to the translator. And that's and then now in the age of e-books that's become more problematic to establish when a book was out of print because books can, or the print of demand they can just be generated so there are these solutions the alternate reversion clause to cover e-book contracts if the publisher fails to keep the work in print and does not reprint it within X months of its receipt of written request to do so then the translator will have the right to terminate this agreement by written notice to publisher the work shall be considered in print as long as the publisher option 1 sells more than 100 digital copies or of the work in the two preceding accounting periods or option 2 remits more than 125 dollars in royalty income resulting from sales of digital copies of the work in the two preceding accounting periods okay, Alex furthermore the publisher shall inform and make available for purchase to the translator any unsold books at or below manufacturing cost to find as a cost of paper printing and binding 12, this contract may be cancelled only by the express agreement of both parties in writing and witness whereof the parties here too have signed this agreement at place on date okay, so yes, Alex well, I also want to draw your attention to the bold-faced items at the bottom there's also an FAQ list that goes with this again at pen.org so some of the things that we're going to be talking about today are also written about on the pen.org site pen.org slash FAQS which is a work in progress and if you have any ideas about questions and maybe I'll take note of questions today that we may be able to add to that in the future so now we'd like to sort of open up and go back and look at specific sections and make comments and so Mary, can I ask you what would be a good place I would like to go back to number four but are there comments that you'd like to make about the proceeding well, I think we want to leave lots of time to talk about copyright and reversion of rights because that's the real controversial issue at this point but maybe we can get some of the other ones cleared up before we get completely lost in that. On four I was looking over contracts before when I'm getting ready for this panel I can't tell you the variety of contracts I've had over the last 45 years and in the old this is starting from the old days when new directions would send you a two paragraph letter of agreement I mean that's how it used to work so all this is definitely it's not just a work in progress it's a huge advance that we have this much protection and these many items spelled out as far as the advance I think in my experience it's not always completed translation it's accepted translation and sometimes you'll have a publisher who knows you and is just happy and will just take and send you the check on completion but I don't think it's unfair for them to say an accepted translation you've already got probably half the advance on signing and the rest of it I don't see I don't see a problem with them saying accepted translation it doesn't mean that it's not going to get copy edited it doesn't mean that there aren't things that are going to change but that to me is an acceptable alternate stipulation on that one so that means that the editor is giving it okay on it or some presses send it out to readers Yale in particular sends these things out to readers when they get the final manuscript they send it out on proposal they send it out on receipt so it may be a while don't count on that check coming through just because you've turned in the thing and the other issue is is it an advance or a payment I would say although this all sounds very lovely with royalties and all this in fact royalties are mostly a figment of your imagination it's not I'm a self employed I've been doing this independently it's all I do I've taken vows of poverty long ago and it's almost mood if it's an advance or just an outright payment because you're not going to make back the advance it's highly unlikely you're going to make back the advance but I do have I've had contracts that it's just a payment it's not actually an advance against royalties so if if you think there's some chance that there might be a little bit of royalties you might want to ask for this just to be a you know I don't know what you call it but an advance not against royalties maybe that's how you would put it although I would add that although it doesn't say so online when we printed this out for you we did say US translations and you'll see some fairly different contracts coming from UK publishers and I recently did a book for Portivello books they're an imprint of Granta and their royalties start from the first book sold and the payment that you receive is not an advance on royalties and what do they call it? payment okay Jessica there's also the question of the authors advance why? well because the only book that I translated where I actually received royalties it came more than a big one but not only was my payment an advance so only after they recouped my payment as well was very large to the royalties kick in now it happened to be this book was a huge seller so we both made money off of it and that was in your contract? okay I've never seen that was that a US contract? it was a big publisher and I think everyone was kind of assuming it was going to sell well but you never really know you know these contracts it's amazing how they can vary and that's an interesting I've never seen that in any other contract no I've never seen that I didn't really know any better the model contract talks about translations into English only is it because no translations into any other languages are printed in the USC or is the contract different for other languages? it shouldn't be different well why one language is marked by a letter and another is named English well I think historically the Penn Translation Committee our membership is people who translate into English but that could change there's no reason why it has to be that way yes I just signed a contract that was like that yeah with Yale I got a third of it when I signed a contract a third of it on turning in on turning in the manuscript not having it accepted and a third on publication so what if they never publish it? well I guess I have some legal recourse I have my contract right here I can look at it well I think another point is that this can be negotiated before you sign the contract if that doesn't seem good for you then ask them if they can change the terms of the payment and see what they say you lose nothing by asking one more point about this on all these in this contract there are no penalties stipulated it's very rare that you see a penalty stipulated like who's going what happens if you don't turn it in but can they do anything else it's interesting that every once in a while I'll get a contract that'll say if you don't do this we can take you to court in such and such a jurisdiction or if so some of this stuff doesn't have T in that way well anybody can take you to court but there's no penalties it's always true that if you don't fulfill a contract you can be taken to court and damages can be yeah but try to take the publisher to court you're right you're right obviously I just want to say again this doesn't intend to be an actual contract that will be signed with your publisher it's sort of a cross check and if you look at publishers contracts you'll see that basically the translator has to do a lot of things in this contract it's sort of putting more of the the responsibility on the publisher the publisher of this for the benefit of the translator it's totally from the translator's perspective so we're very unlikely that all of these things will be actually agreed to but we should try should we go on to the next okay and again as Mary was just saying about the question of royalties on my last contract there were two percent if you figured out mathematically there was no way that those royalties were going to pay out so it just seems like a meaningless kind of gesture I think the real advocacy should be in first of all getting translations to be paid not as advance it's just a payment and then to increase royalty rates as a long term sort of project you might not be able to get that in your contract but I think as translators I believe for that I think we do better financially on our translations the other important thing if you do get into royalties then go all the way get ebooks mentioned in any kind of digital form any kind of format that you can anticipate that your translation will be in then have that written into the contract and ebook royalties are now the figure is seems and I don't agree with this figure 15% seems also very low royalties so yeah that's a good point I'll follow up on that if you have a specific question so we worked with this on a lawyer we would have to ask but we should all say that we're not totally don't pretend to give any kind of legal advice so we did want to just get this out there and let all of you know about it and yeah certainly there would be questions and come up yeah there's perhaps a reason for the difference between payment on an ebook and retail sale is that there's no there's no the ebook distributor is a sole distributor there's no retail store Amazon they're not buying anything they have to a retail store is at risk for the sale at least theoretically and so so it has to establish a rate but it's the publisher itself which is holding the the property and the publisher collects the money that's not how it is you buy ebooks through Amazon you buy books through IndieBound you buy ebooks through your local bookstore not necessarily from the publisher will you tell me in ebooks what's the difference between wholesale and retail price oh I don't know that there's a difference I can't write my mind around that I can do it for our copy I can't do it for a board you go on Amazon and they're constantly recalibrated prices based on all kinds of algorithms and so you could buy the same book for 199 that yesterday cost 1099 so I just don't think there is a list price that can be set in the contract so it has to be a percentage of what the publisher is getting from the reseller these are good questions and we'll definitely ask our lawyer about them and see why it's worded in that way but again I think the point is and a lot of the please disagree with me that royalties don't usually pay out as a general rule so it's a floating price publisher specified a certain amount that the ebook should I guess especially when it first comes out perhaps it's like because they don't want it to be way less than what the hard cover of the paper matches but I've noticed that on Amazon sometimes it's like the ebook price is set by the publisher I'm a little confused as a publisher as well as as a writer when I when I am the author determine what percentage the author is going to get that's fixed in stone it doesn't matter if I then lower the cover price of the book it's a percentage of the cover of the original cover price unless I do an addition it's going to be if it's a $10 book he's going to get a buck even if I sell it for $5 now I don't know how that differs for ebooks if there's no stable price I mean wholesale is not an issue but if there's no stable price at all well it may be that this net receipts is simply the language that they're using because they don't use the word cover price for an ebook since there's no cover I mean it may really come down to that that's what it sounds like I mean I also know that there I've signed contracts that define it as the net receipts is actually defined in the contract and it can be different from one publisher to the next how they define that because they sell some to discount to certain booksellers and I mean it can get pretty complicated they have different laws there is a model contract that the society of authors in the UK publishes through the translators association and that would be a good resource to look for it's one thing that recently popped up in a European translation company that I ended up not translating for and that was they wanted me to hold the publisher harmless and then I would be responsible for the legal fees of someone to sue and obviously I was not going to agree to that paragraph and eventually that was the end of our negotiations which was fine by me because I don't want to lose my I just want to realize that that it looks fairly harmless because the word harmless is there the translator it holds the publisher almost no that means you're on the hook for the legal fees so read that fine print that might appear in our contracts eventually that they find it successful there so it's a bad paragraph don't sign contracts it's not a trend now do you consider an audio book to be published in what kind of form is that what you meant that's a subsidiary right? I think that's a subsidiary and actually it's not a bad idea to list the actual formats if it's an audio book or if it's a film adaptation or if it's TV or whatever it is to because I have an agent he does that he breaks it out by media by actual specifies and he has like the anything else you could think of are you working your rights just to say all forms of media I have an intellectual property lawyer friend of the UK he's starting to see the contracts in all forms of media throughout the universe listen the first time I heard the word universal rights a friend of mine had a contract she said they want universal rights and I said I recommend just the galaxy but apparently that's not what it meant in an American legal context are you within your rights to say all forms of media or are you better off listing individual I I think that there's value in listing the individual I mean there's not that many there's three or four it doesn't I think part of what my friend was saying is part of the intention in saying all forms of media is that you're covering anything that might come up and it was to address an issue with contracts that predate the e-books where royalties were still being paid out you do want to cover yourself on these things the brief included but not limiting to really useful in contracts like that or any sort of contract where you're talking about media so these are open to other because then you're specifically like definitely they're the most common but then if anything else arises it's very useful we also maybe at the end of the presentation or maybe right now as we said we're not lawyers there are various ways that you can sort of fine tune your contracts and have your contracts read as I said sent can be read by for example the author's guild reviews if you're a member they will review author's contracts and we think that they should also if we're members translates they should review translator's contracts with an eye towards what is happening and what publishers are doing what they're offering to authors because I think that translators should think of ourselves as authors of course so our contracts should reflect in their contracts so that would be like a kind of fine tuning if you want to go beyond the stage of our model contract and there will probably have rough conditions about that should we move on to the next so this is the question about you actually being present your name being present in the book itself and this is something that I strongly urge that you can negotiate for that's something that you ask for and not accept the publishers probably on the whole what would you say Mary not give you as you write the name on the cover and you really have to insist on this it depends on the publisher and who their audience is and how commercial the book is and how important how well known if Jessica Cone is translating a book and I want people to know that and it's going to be a commercial book yeah do you ask for it okay I'd rather get more money for it sell the rights to you not having a name on it but the title page it's up to you also I recommend that you make sure the publisher has your latest biography that they're not just looking at something on the web that you send it, you provide them with a copy for your bio that you ask for things that would be on the back flap or be on the back cover many publishers for example Open Letter the smaller independent publishers seem to be doing a really good job at this I think maybe with more commercial larger publishers you really have to specify that this is what you want I heard a story of somebody who's contract specified that her name should appear on the cover and the book arrived under your step it was suggested that your contract is specified that your name should be on the front all the things you have to think of that's true Portobello prints your name on the back cover in small type that's right that's their policy now the president Susan Bernofsky's latest translation of the metamorphosis her name is actually on the spine do you mean that everyone? Slash yes Frontier and also I was at the panel before about reviewing translations and it was mentioned it was recommended that translators write commentary that they write prefaces that they write translators notes and I think that maybe is a negotiating point for the contract the contract stage you can ask for that if you want to be president I want to talk about what you do it's your work and you will be noticed more the viewers will take note of you I think the likelihood is higher that you'll be mentioned in the view and the characteristics of your translation will be talked about if you kind of take ownership of your translation by writing something, the power text around it and probably would that be a good idea to discuss with the publisher at this stage is that the contract or that could be informally arranged it's usually in the contract it's not always in the contract but the other thing about writing I mean it has anything to do with the contract but one of the reasons it's good for you to write about the book is that reviewers often have no idea what to say and you're really providing them with a foothold and maybe they aren't going to repeat what you say but it's going to give them direction as to how to talk about a book how to talk about the book although be aware you're not going to be paid extra to write it and you may not get paid for completing the work until you turn that in because if that's part of the define of the work I mean that happened to me recently I turned in the work but the work actually was defined in the contract as the translation of the novel plus the afterward it took me a while to write the afterward I was really burned out from translating the book you could work into your payment the payment for the afterward as well correct? you could try I mean I asked I didn't get actually I want to go back to the point of payment there's a standard per word standard of payment and translation could you talk about that well there is no standard and there I can tell you that we're doing a lot better than when translators got like two cents a word but and it also varies a lot by language there's sort of norms within certain you know Russians will have a kind of a range that they get it always used to be that we would have the contract on a per word basis I'm seeing more and I think Alex said he is seeing too where you just have a lump sum of kind of a round figure it's kind of based on how long the book is but I don't know there seems it seems to be more palatable in some way I'm not sure why the negotiation turns out more palatably that way but if you say this is worth $13,000 and they it's a number they can somehow publishers seem to work well with that but it's mostly on a per word way you know as you know just because it's how many words it is it doesn't say how long it's going to take you I mean you know an easy book is going to some books are going to be slower than other books so that should be obviously figured into what your payment is it's more about time than really words I think another thing about the even if you are being paid per word rate some contracts will say that that's contingent upon they're receiving a grant that they're applying for and I know people who have signed contracts saying they will be paid a certain word rate and the grant didn't come through so the publisher under the terms of the contract was not actually obligated to pay them that rate so you need to be aware of that too yeah and if that's the case then I would really negotiate very hard with the publisher about what is their success rate getting subsidies, what will happen if you don't get the subsidy I mean really get a lot of details and also follow through with them to make sure that they are applying for the subsidy yeah and what subsidy they are what is a specific subsidy they are going for so you can really kind of track that I would expect a disaster this is I would never ever rely on a grant that I didn't know about I mean I've had maybe one contract like that and I only signed it because I knew from the granting institution that I would get it but I would never trust the publishers you've got to have we're saying these things that you need to negotiate for but if you really want to translate a book it's incredible what you put up within a contract if it's a book you really care about for one reason or another and it really saps your moral fortitude to be that needy and want it so but I personally would not trust a publisher on that on something that's got so many ifs in it too many ifs something back we have a lot of things that you'll do if you really want to I was asked to also translate the grant proposal to what was the source language of the book is that the book off? no no you mean there's a publisher in the world that doesn't read English that's amazing yes oh yeah right whichever one's longer Russian and is it based on the word rate of the manuscript you turn in or the final edited version because usually you lose words in editing well I've never had that has anyone had that edited version I've never seen that have you yeah well not with a publisher but with a private I mean I've had contracts with individuals based on them still a concept just to follow up on the subvention question I'm about to go into negotiations with a contract that will be contingent on them receiving a company subvention I'm 95% sure that they will get it but in the event that they don't recommend putting in a clause saying that the contract is not valid if the subvention does not come through is that the way to do it that's what I would do how much do you want to do the book well it will be my first book yeah so maybe there's sort of you know I'm going to get a book out there I could you ask them instead of is it in advance that you're getting is it advance based agreement I don't think so I would ask them to in the case that they don't get that grant that's not going to be in advance it's going to be payment and maybe the royalty rate will go up or something that's a compensate for that loss because it's probably going to be a lot of money that they're not going to get do you really suggest there's a lot of contracts between foreign agents and the publisher that are making a carbon fall sales in Spain and many demands she makes in the contract including that nothing original should be altered and really if this is just a move to her or to what demands we should I would take that to a lawyer actually who's experienced in negotiation publishing contracts along that line though it does not say it goes to a lawyer sometimes that adds another stressful level how do I find an electrical property so there's no resource that has in that sense and I'm thinking that that only is the contract in Spanish but it's now in legal leads we're getting layers and layers of things and it's impossible to figure this out if it's coming from Mexico other than so is there any place you would have us go to the author's guild is the only place that we're the author's guild if you join the author's guild and as a translator you can join the author's guild has as part of their membership benefits contract reviews they do not have anybody there who specializes in translations they don't have a translation section but if you're a member they provide contract review for free based on you know your membership fees it's like it's 90 dollars to join the first year and then it's I think like 150 it's comparable to other professional association membership fees they're the only organization that I'm aware of we're aware of that provides that service and I'm sorry I knew that also is that something that also in terms of a listserv there have been many effort to say hey I've got this going on right now in Barcelona any suggestions somebody from the altar board in the room who could answer that and there may be you know in New York state for instance there's a volunteer or lawyers for the arts who provides something like that service again you need to join the organization to pay in annual dues and there may be you know depending on where you live other services available okay we want to just quickly number seven is pretty standard the three copies I guess you could negotiate for more if you wanted them and number eight I'm not sure what would trigger number eight I guess you had some suspicions about the accounting but we want to look at turning the page to number nine this is really crucial about your and this goes back to the question of what is a work for hire contract a work for hire contract is something that you do for payment it's not advanced you pay you're out of the picture you have no continuing right in your work in the translation that you offered at once it was absolutely standard for publishers to only offer work for hire contracts they never register the copyright in your name that situation is changing and but there are still publishers out there who will not do it Europe Editions is one of them and many others if you just do a very simple check if you look at the translation look at the copyright page and say it's not in the translator's name it's in the publisher's name or some other this is a right and there's no reason why publishers should not be getting you registering the copyright in your name again if you really want to do the translation that you know that you're doing it as a work for hire you agree to that but it shouldn't come as a surprise to you can I object to that a little nuance a work for hire does not mean that you don't get royalties you can do a work that you do not have copyright on and still have a substantial financial stake in the book it used to there used to be the assumption that copyright you couldn't have that interest without having copyright but that's just not true you know this is negotiable and the final analysis it's you sign this you can look at yourself in the mirror the next morning if you can't do that then don't sign the book, sign the contract but if you can then there may there's really only aside from the moral right which I totally agree with there are there's really only one reason practical reason why you really want copyright that's the next clause on reversion rights but as far as financial interest that's not true it's just not true maybe it once was but it's not anymore so the idea of that unless you had copyright you would not get royalties it's not true okay well let's look at the next the reversion, oh yes that's defined by what rights the publisher has the publisher buys whatever your translation subsidiary right to the right of the author of the initial of the original work so the publisher is buying specific rights when they buy the rights to publish it in English and presumably that's the same rights that they have that they're claiming because they can't sell your translation if they don't have the right to sell it in Europe or whatever if they only have North American rights or if they only have western hemisphere rights they have purchased the right to have your translation into English translated into other languages what's true that happens all the time yes they're in there or they're not they don't have to be specified if they're not specified the publisher has them yeah if it doesn't say that you have that it doesn't belong to you and even if you have copyright they have control of the copyright for the term of the application so it's not like you can say oh no you can't translate this into Spanish it's it's under their control it's under their control for as long as the book is in print but could you ask them you could work into the contract that you would get paid if your translation was used as a base of a subset yeah but you have to say that have you done that I've been translated into other languages but I didn't I was a long time ago I got screwed again distributed or published by separate entities in the UK that's a subsidiary I mean they sell rights for UK I guess it's the same exact book I mean they don't even change it to British spell it but I I'm pretty sure that I don't get anything I hope that's true that's a subsidiary yeah and it should be specified in the contract it's actually one of the most common things to happen and usually you get a set a flat fee for that sometimes they order it my experience has always been that it has fallen under subsidiary rights but I'm not quite sure how that that's a nuance I don't haven't thought about yeah okay so now the original when the publisher is no longer is not in the catalog, is not selling the publisher is no longer behind it you want to get the rights back to you and this is the important reversion of rights clause and this clause works in concert with your having copyright and we've just recently been looking into the question of copyright and we found some contracts which give the translator register copyright in the translator's name but there is no reversion of rights clause so basically it's just sort of a symbolic kind of honor that you have that you have a copyright but the real value in having a copyright is that you can get your work back when the publisher is no longer doing anything with it and this is something that I think you all want to be very very careful when you look at the contract to make sure that it's there it's not just copyright but it's reversion of rights clause especially when they're sending you records they're sending you raw accountings well you have to specify you have to tell them they're not going to write to you and say the book is out of print you have to, you know, alert them and there are actually a lot of ways establishing that something is out of print here it's when the rights revert to the author the automatic revert to the translator my question is, I'm going to ask the lawyer you would have to know when do the rights revert to the author where are the conditions of that oops get out, just get out I would say of all the the clauses in here this is one that this group in particular should think a lot about because a lot of you are the discoverer of authors you're their first you're finding new people you're kind of active translators a lot of you are young or new to publishing and some of these authors may go on and have careers in the future and you'll say, oh, but I did a book of his 20 years ago and now somebody else wants now they want to go back because this writer is now famous this has happened to me very seriously if you can't get those rights back, they're just going to publish your translation without you they'll buy the book from the original publisher and they will buy your translation and you will have no interest in it when the author is all of a sudden has an audience so this is something it's hard to picture sometimes but you are you play such an important role in discovering literature and that's where you're going to that's where you have to protect yourself there was no reversion of rights clause and I didn't know that there should be a few years later the book went out of print the author was notified the author got in touch with me and said the book is no longer in print in English I would like to license your translation to self-publish the English again and I immediately panicked because I saw there was no I had no reversion of rights clause I contacted the publisher and the publisher said yeah no problem, it's easy all you have to do is write a letter and ask for the rights to be reverted and this is a major US publisher so all I had to do was write the letter it took a while, like a few months it's a process they have to go through but it's really not going to be published anymore and then they send you a letter saying yeah the rights are reverted to you but you had copyright I had copyright do you have a copy of that letter that you could send to us at Penn Translation so we could include it on the website our address is on the that would be great for us to have but when you're looking at contracts now you do make sure that it has a reversion yes but you know I just contacted the publisher I don't know if I'll publish or something like that exactly no, but if it happens to you try, write to them and find out if that's what it takes yes a more general question in terms of negotiation the ability to negotiate I ran into a situation once where the publisher proposed a contract to me, there were public clauses I didn't like to use my little contract to help propose to encounter arguments and they said they did not have a lawyer on staff so they could not amend or modify the contract whatsoever this was obviously a pretty terrible experience and I regret lots of things about it but for future references for other people are there strategies that you can use in a situation like that where you just have to it's like the art of negotiation I wouldn't take no for an answer how can you not have a lawyer what kind of a lawyer do you have to there are things that businesses have to do and have lawyers to do them but yeah, someone has to take experiences like that to really make you very business-like in your approach to your work if you haven't had her hand up for that let's make the contract and the conversations primarily about working with publishers Alex mentioned though working with individuals and I'm wondering about that I've gotten myself in trouble repeatedly because they don't learn with authors who are asking you to translate they're not making lots of written promises about how that's going to work and how we're going to publish it and I've gotten screwed repeatedly so I'm wondering those of you who have a publishing contract like you felt if you brought contracts like this to authors, to individuals and if they've been receptive and how you frame things differently or if you frame things differently because for for folks who are discovering younger and newer authors they might not be publishers waiting and waiting already and so if you have that relationship with someone and you want to start trying to get it out there sometimes it would be very tempting to work with the author at least at the beginning and it doesn't necessarily go well So this is a I'm not saying I've done it a lot but usually it's been just there's no contract and it's worked out for me I do have a book now that I'm translating for an author's daughter he has been translated into English a lot previously by publishing houses but this is just for her but the contract is because it was there it's a she's check and it's a check contract so I just tried to make sure it had the best terms possible but it's not a publishing contract it's just a translation contract so that's the only experience that I have I think first of all an author can't promise anything an author can't say if I get a contract you will be the translator if I get a contract you will get X, Y and Z they just can't promise that because that's just not within their power if they're an influential person maybe they can put pressure on you can't expect that from them on the other hand they can't expect you've got to specify that they have not bought the copyright that they can use this to submit but it is not a work for hire and that you retain the copyright and then when a publisher is found then they have to come to you but I think that was what I focused on in this contract is what is my pay and the copyright but there's only so much I can do if they sell it to a publisher and it's very easy you don't have to have a lawyer to get copyright you just say you copyright yourself and that works just a read write that does work and I did that based on your advice because I thought I was translating directly from the author who I knew would be published eventually but there wasn't a publisher in the picture and you recommended making sure that it was my copyright and I think the contract said something like you know it's I own the rights this translation I am giving the rights for a limited amount of time so the author or organization can shop the manuscript around and then like you said and it's I've done it a few times I'm never quite sure have what kind of legal what I have to say but it's better to have something in writing than not okay so just to underline once more the currency reversion of rights in your contract it's not just an attempt at the copyright and then the new world of ebooks and print on demand and the question of how do you establish out of print should also be worked out with the publisher in advance and here are some guidelines here but it'll depend on the scale of your publication if it's tens of thousands of copies or maybe one or two thousand copies so you probably have to work out the yeah and I would also say on this point the author's guild again I'm not here to plug the author's guild but they do publish if you join the author's guild they have a huge fat guide to trade publishing contracts and they have something like a model contract where they go through and they give the commentary on each of these and they talk about what constitutes out of print or the different there actually a variety of circumstances that can be considered out of print for an ebook and even though those are for author contracts there's no reason why you couldn't use that language and suggest it or insist on it or negotiate it with a publisher in a translation contract again Penn as an organization does not do that for authors that's the only reason I'm saying the author's guild the Penn translation committee has this model contract but Penn as an organization doesn't do that but the author's guild does have that resource available yeah with print on demand when it comes to establishing 24k is out of print can you base the out of print on how many copies have been printed within a certain period of time or how many orders have been filled exactly that's one of the ways that they define it in this author's guild contract it can be either what about what about orders received orders received in other words no orders have been no orders for the book have been received yeah that too supposedly they're going to fill them pretty quickly yeah that's the same Marbet how do you prove it got a question in the back a separate issue I'd like to see the Penn contract pass it to you as a resale of the translation we're going to get 50% of what the publisher got the author takes the other 50 it was a a very nice deal for them I don't know if 50% is standard or not but it's in there that's subsidiary rights again what we were saying earlier that would be covered under subsidiary rights and what we were saying is we recommend if you can to have that put in explicitly but that would fall in the general category of subsidiary rights we said 50% that's great there are a lot of brackets here referring to numbers and percentages and that's because we cannot officially set these numbers we can't say officially we should get 15 cents per word but we can all exchange information about what we're getting for our work as translators we can talk about publishers with each other there's no injunction about that there won't be a panel later a roundtable later in the conference called professional literary translators do they exist and can they pay the bills and there will be some discussion of these of rates and all that during that roundtable yes I'm back you just have one work in an anthology is it totally the same is it totally different sorry it's a big question okay so a contract with the publisher for your work appearing in an anthology some of it applies I don't know I've done it's been a long time but I have done chapters for anthologies there are some of the same issues but it's obviously not applicable to the whole work but you're a part of it but you could retain some of those rights even if just one thing I think you want the rights to revert back to you very quickly actually because it's a stand-alone piece you could publish it elsewhere yeah I've never seen an anthologist demand rights for a period of time to individual pieces within an anthology it's the key for use and it doesn't preclude other uses you can go into with other anthology where you can publish the whole work it's a piece of oral ethics but without borders their contracts might be a good model for that and they happily share them and I'd certainly be happy to their contracts are like that it's basically an anthology oh yes thank you for mentioning that because academic publishers generally they will not give copyright you should ask for it and Marion we were discussing this the other day have you had some success with sometimes I get it I don't but at this point if I don't I get something instead like money or food food you know a puppy I don't know I would not give up I don't give up my copyright lightly but they're not consistent these publishers who tell you we never do this I mean the only publisher they tell you all kinds of things some of the big publishers not the academic one so much but they say oh we never do this that's a line that's just a line however Europa apparently never does it apparently I've never heard of anybody I looked at a lot of books of theirs and I've never seen anybody so Europa and it's a shame because they do beautiful they do wonderful books and everybody wants they should be ashamed of themselves really over here I just wanted to piggyback on that I was in a political series for Organize and this panel I wanted to briefly share my experience of you know based on the title of your panel asked for what you deserve I recently walked away from a book that I really really really wanted to work on I walked away from it three times because they kept saying we never do this we can't do that I do have a lawyer who helps me parcel because I cannot understand it and he says you know your job is to translate you don't have a law degree it's very very complex but apparently the third time was the charm and the fourth time all of us found the wherewithal to tell some of the things I was asking for and I think I've met up with a lot of translators who you know it's like a lot of us especially like I'm really early in my career don't know what we can ask for I think collectively if we all start asking for more or be more because like each time I walked away from that do you know they're counting on finding someone else out there with the same language pair who isn't well informed or it doesn't mind getting screwed I mean it's all different you know but I think we can all really help each other out with the experience of writing to the publisher to get a reimbursement rights it's just this organization I think individually is very powerful because even though we can there's numbers and stuff like that there's a lot of experience collectively one last thing about international contracts before legal use I attached into my network of fellow translators who work in the opposite direction as frequently as a foreign countries have a similar organization or more advocacy I know that the Italian cousin Europa is much more respectful of translators than Europa is but I wouldn't have known that but I'm not asked around that's a good strategy I think we're kind of running out of time just related to that just to pick up on that you've said you basically never earn anything off them and I would agree I ask for them every single time we got them about half of the time never made a penny but it's still important to ask for them because you never know you never know what you're really going to do and at least if you've asked for them you've got them and it does really well and then ask for more than what they offer that the senators would offer I would say that every translator who's been working a long time has a cautionary tale about that and the classic one is Robossus he's the classic one well now it's the translator I've got one too and I'm going to wrap up yeah oh I've got to go yeah totally listen everyone thank you so much and please we'll keep the conversation going