A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: What Does My Contract Mean and Should I Sign It? -- Paragraphs 2-4 (Copyright, Warranty, Permissions)
It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic addresses contracts -- what is a good one, what is a bad one, and what do the specialized terms actually mean? I will answer these questions in a series of posts, using, to start, our contracts, and will go through them paragraph by paragraph. Then, I will look at some other publishers' contracts for differing content. Last week we looked at the introductory paragraphs, mostly general information, including who is the author, what is the title, what rights are being offered. Paragraph 1 states what rights you are offering -- specifically and in detail. The next three sections spell out related under