That’s the title of what should be a very interesting podcast by lawyer Zick Rubin, a specialist in media and publishing law.
Here are details of July 14th podcast (11 a.m. Eastern):
Join us for an interview with publishing lawyer and textbook author Zick Rubin, The Law Office of Zick Rubin (www.zickrubin.com), who will cover some of the worst legal mistakes that a textbook or academic author can make. Learn about some of the legal traps that can be found in a range of areas, including provisions in publishing contracts, collaboration agreements, and copyright and permission issues. Rubin will be presenting an expanded audio conference on this topic for TAA members on Thurs., Sept. 23 @ 10 a.m. EST.
TAA refers to the Text and Academic Authors Association. Both Zick Rubin and I are members, as are many textbook authors and a lot of other folks involved with acadmic publishing and writing.
Many of you reading this have either written a college textbook or plan to write one in the future, so it’s good to know good legal practices regarding textbook and academic publishing. And even if you focus only on writing supplements, it’s still a good idea to know more about the legal aspects of publishing and writing.
I know from experience that you can’t always trust publishers to deal fairly with you. For the most part I’ve had no contract problems for the 200 or so supplements and ancillaries I’ve created for college textbooks.
As some of you may know, I’m also an outdoors writer who specializes in hiking guidebooks. I’ve had three trade paperbacks published with The Mountaineers Books in Seattle, and they’ve been quite fair and reasonable with contracts. (Find out about my two books remaining in print at my Northern California Hiking Trails blog.)
However, when I lived on Kauai in Hawaii in the late 1990s, I was negotiating a four-book deal on outdoors activities in the islands with a major East Coast publisher. The contract contained several clauses that were very unfavorable to me. One would cut my royalties in half for all books sold at a greater than 40% discount (that’s most of ‘em); another would have forced me to return all advance money if the publisher decided not to publish the book — for any reason at all. The deal eventually fell apart and I moved back to California a year later, one of those major life-changing things…
Back to that podcast. You needn’t tune in at that exact time. You can come later and still listen, and perhaps even download it to your media player.
