Book or music publishing agreement, royalties

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Document overview

This is a straight forward but comprehensive publishing agreement for use by either an author/composer or a publisher. It is a flexible agreement, providing an ideal framework for publishing any created work.
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Document properties
  • Length:18 pages (4850 words)
  • Available in:
    MsWordMicrosoft Word DOCXApple pagesApple PagesRTFRTF
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About this book or music publishing agreement

You may be the author/composer or a publisher. This document can be edited easily to give the advantage to one side or the other. It covers protection for both in reasonable balance.

The document refers to a named book. However, it could as well be used for publication of any single or multiple written work.

Your work could be of any size, complexity and for any purpose. For example, it could be music, a plain script, a book to be converted to script, or any other “created work” or product in which you own copyright. Only you can describe it accurately. For the sake of clarity in the document, we have named your work “Black, White and Green”. You now wish to arrange to exploit your work through an arrangement with a publisher.

Any publishing arrangement is technically a licence on agreed terms. See below for an alternative form of licence and for a sale of your entire rights.

This agreement preserves the authors’ or originator’s rights to sell the same material in different markets. It preserves moral rights as author.

The agreement covers subsidiary rights in detail so that the author may receive different levels of royalty for different areas of marketing. Payment terms are also covered in great detail, so as to make clear exactly what will be paid to the author, how and when.

This publishing agreement also provides protection for the publisher in several important areas.

Key features

  • Professionally drawn, tough law
  • Easy to edit (as always with Net Lawman documents)
  • Thorough coverage of legal areas
  • Practical, alternative business provisions
  • No requirement for you to be your own lawyer

Alternatives to this agreement

This agreement contains provisions special to the book and music publishing industry. If your created work is not directly in that sector, you may decide instead to consider Copyright licence agreement, any purpose.

For a more comprehensive version of the sale agreement see Sale of rights in television, film or media production for cash and shares.

If you are having a book or other text written for you, look at Copy writing contract: article, book, manual.

Contents of this publishing agreement

Here is a list of the major subjects covered in this agreement:

  • Definitions and interpretation
  • Warranties and understandings
  • Author’s warranties and representations
  • Publishers control of publication and requirement for bibliography
  • The licence
  • The royalties and payment provisions - in detail
  • Subsidiary rights
  • Protection of author’s rights
  • Dealing with third party infringement of copyright
  • Confidentiality
  • Indemnities
  • Other matters relating to enforcement and other legal issues
  • Free additional document on how to complete a downloaded legal document
Sample book or music publishing agreement, royaltiesFront cover

Recent reviews

Simply Excellent!
28 February 2017
Excellent!
Rik Kooyman
Review of the United Kingdom version
Clear And Easy To Understand
16 May 2013
Very comprehensive yet easy to understand. I had already found a contract document on line but was unsure whether it would really cover all the points I would need in order to ensure the document was sound.

I found Net Lawman by chance after doing a web search for information on ‘publishing rights for books.’ I liked the fact that they offered documents in ‘plain English’ and that they were very reasonably priced. I was also swayed by the refund policy.

I would definitely recommend Net Lawman to others and will be making it my first port of call for documents in the future.

Thank you
Amanda Wilson
Review of the United Kingdom version
Needed tweaks
16 September 2014
The document was reasonably well written. However, there were a number of inconsistencies in terminology (e.g. between using the terms Company, Publisher and the actual company name). And the second royalty option did not specify what the percentages were based on. In fact, we had to make many corrections throughout the document.
Moreover, it was not made clear on the website that this contract was very much biased towards the author. For example, most publishers will have their hands tied when it comes to marketing, promotion and rights management if the author does not transfer copyright to them. We are a publisher and would like to have seen more options available that consider both authors' and publishers' needs.
Luke Jeffery
Review of the United Kingdom version
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