How to Negotiate Your Book Publishing Contract
You’re putting all the parts of your book proposal together, and when the publisher agrees to accept it, you receive the paperwork you’ve waited for – the book contract.
Do you know that you can change the contract’s terms?
A book publisher wants as many rights to your book as humanly possible, and I don’t blame them. They’re taking a huge gamble on publishing your book, spending thousands of dollars to turn your words into a work of art.
You’ll be sent a standard contract. However, that contract can be changed to set many of the terms in your favor. All you have to do is ask rather than sign and return the document without changes.
Before signing my first contract, I consulted a book found in my local library. It explained all of the contract’s wording so that I understood the terms, and it also encouraged new authors to negotiate specific parts of the contract that were changeable. I asked for them, and each were approved.
Those parts include:
The publisher won’t allow you to change everything, and as publisher, they will always get the lion’s share of money. It’s up to you to edit as much as possible so that you increase your share. Even a few requested changes makes the deal better than originally offered.
Today, you have Internet sites such as this one and the library available to research book contracts before yours arrives. Customers rarely, if ever, buy vehicles for the suggested sticker price. The same is true for authors when receiving standard contracts.
Change the terms, because it’s negotiable.