Authors Guild - Authors Guild Vs Simon & Schuster

Authors Guild Vs Simon & Schuster

On May 17, 2007, Authors Guild Executive Director Paul Aiken released a statement warning members of a new clause in Simon & Schuster contracts. The standard industry contract allows for the reversion of rights. In other words, the specific rights granted to the publisher by the author under their contract (copyright itself remains the author's) revert from the publisher to the author if the book’s sales fall below a minimum level or when the book goes out of print. Simon & Schuster’s new clause stipulates that as long as the book is made available in electronic format, the rights remain with the publisher. This would effectively extend the publisher’s ownership for the entire length of the copyright, thereby preventing an author from seeking other avenues for their book. As Simon & Schuster is a major American publishing house with many imprints, the concern is that such a clause, left unchecked, would eventually become standard industry procedure.

On May 22, Simon & Schuster released a statement that the Authors Guild “perpetuated serious misinformation regarding Simon and Schuster, our author contracts and our commitment to making our authors' books available for sale.”

As a result, on May 30, the Guild launched a high profile campaign, Republish or Perish, which coincided with the 2007 BookExpo America. The campaign involves ads placed in general interest magazines informing authors of this new clause, organizing symposia on the new contract terms, providing advice on how they can protect themselves.

On May 31, 2007, Simon & Schuster executives Jack Romanos, Carolyn Reidy, and Rick Richter apologized for “any early miscommunication” regarding reversion of rights and stated their interest as wanting “to keep books in print more effectively and to market frontlist and backlist titles more vibrantly. They further indicated their willingness to negotiate a “revenue-based threshold” to determine whether a book is in print.