False Equivalencies

So how do you push back against onerous publishing clauses that will probably never be deal-breakers for an author?

I'm pondering on that question a lot as I think about the ever worsening audit clauses which publishers are offering.

The audit clause is the one that says you've got the right to hire an accountant to go and look at the publisher's records for your book to be sure the royalty reporting is accurate.

I've never done an audit in the 27 years I've been in the business.  They're expensive.  An accountant might cost hundreds of dollars an hour, a single day of looking at the publisher's records and the prep work and reporting could easily cost a few thousand dollars, and a complicated situation might bring that cost up considerably.  You have to have a lot of money to do this, and you have to be pretty convinced that it's going to be worthwhile.

There have always been some restrictions on the author's right to audit.  It has to be done during business hours.  You can't do it six times a year.  You can't audit a royalty statement from 39 years ago.

While there have always been restrictions, there's also been an understanding that if you find the publisher's screwing up, the publisher will have to pay costs of the audit, kind of like the "loser pays" for attorney fees that are found in certain types of civil court actions.

But over the years, the publishers have tried to make it more and more restrictive.

They'll start out saying a statement is binding after just one year.  This is ridiculous.  The publishers have to keep records for the IRS for a lot longer than that.  But the shorter that time period, the harder it might be to find a cumulative pattern of errors, or become aware of some sub-licensed edition the publisher never told you about.

They'll pay for the audit only if mistakes are above a certain amount.   The publishers now start out suggesting this might be 10% of the lifetime earnings on a book.  So let's say you are one of our successful clients making a lot of money. You might think it's significant if you find out the publisher's made a $25,000 error in its favor.  But if you're talking about a book like The Firm by John Grisham or a Harry Potter novel or Dead Until Dark -- well, if hypothetically that book has the 10% of lifetime language, the publisher won't pay a dime toward the cost of you discovering a $25K error if the earnings on the book are above $250,000 over its entire existence.

We try and bargain these things to our clients' betterment.  But rarely will the publisher give us as long to audit as the several years they may need to retain records to make the IRS happy.  Getting 10% of lifetime down to 5% of lifetime is better but still not good.  Let's say you find there's a particular royalty period when the publisher paid you $2500 and should have paid you $5000.  You might think that's a 100% error, but the publisher will look not at that one period but the entire lifetime earnings.

So now the new wrinkle is to say that the publisher will pay for the audit only up to the size of the error.  Let's say you spend $5250 to find that $2500 error, and that you're lucky enough that this is more than 5% of the total earnings for your book.  Well, the rich publishing conglomerate that is responsible for rendering correct royalty statements will pay only $2500 of the $5250 you spent to find out that they made a $2500 boo-boo in their favor, which means you've just spent $2750 in order to get back $2500.

This sucks!

The publisher has the responsibility to account correctly.  They shouldn't be able to layer on fine print restriction after fine print restriction that makes it very likely that there is never going to be any way to rigorously check that they are fulfilling their obligation.

But how can I recommend an author walk away from a deal over this when I've never actually done an audit in 27 years, even on older contracts that predate many of these most onerous provisions?

And if an author will never walk away from a deal because of the bad audit language, what is the ultimate leverage to keep the language from getting worse and worse and worse?

It might seem reasonable that the publisher shouldn't be responsible for all the costs of a $12,398 audit that ends up finding a $298 error in the publisher's favor.  In fact, it is unreasonable to expect the publisher to do that.  Nonetheless, it's a false equivalency.  The publisher has deeper pockets.  The publisher has a responsibility to get it right in the first place.

There's another clause where similar language is starting to show up.  It seems very reasonable to say that in the event of a lawsuit regarding the work, which could be someone suing you for libel or you suing the publisher for violating the contract, that the liability of each party will be limited to the size of your advance.  Isn't that great!  You get a $5K advance, you get sued for libel, you only have to pay $5K to the publisher if there's a settlement or you're found guilty.  But it isn't so great.  Let's say the publisher forgets to pay you royalties or has this nasty habit of selling translation rights it doesn't own or puts cover copy on the book that is libelous where your book itself is not.  They get to walk away after paying you only $5K in damages.

False equivalency.

You write one book a year.  Your livelihood depends on that one book.  You have to pay $5K, it's a very very big deal for you.

Your publisher might publish dozens of books a month, hundreds of books a year, take in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and earn tens of millions in profit.

$5K is a big deal to you.  $5K is nothing to your publisher.  This very fair-sounding language that puts this nice equal limit on everyone's obligations is a lot nicer to your publisher than it is to you.

And, again, how many authors are going to walk away from a deal over this contract language?  How many instances can I even recommend that they do so?

What's sauce for the goose isn't always sauce for the gander.