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ASJA CONTRACTS WATCH 41 (vol 4, #2) CW970204 February 4, 1997
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News of AMERICAN EXPRESS PUBLISHING, AMERICAN WAY, AUTHORS REGISTRY, BON APPETIT, BOSTON GLOBE, CONDE NAST TRAVELER, COOKING LIGHT, DELTA SKY, DISNEY, DIVERSION, FAMILY FUN, FOOD & WINE, GOURMET, HARPER'S, HARTFORD COURANT, HEMISPHERES, PREVENTION, ROBB REPORT, RODALE, SCHOLASTIC, SMITHSONIAN, SOUTHERN PROGRESS, TIMES-MIRROR, TIME WARNER, TRAVEL & LEISURE, WESTWAYS ...
Things are getting better for magazine freelancers. So says Folio: First Day, the magazine industry newsletter, in a front-page story (Jan. 27) headed "Electronic-Rights Battle Starts to Lighten Up." Evidence? "One indication of the changing tide," the newsletter reports, "is that more magazines are signing up with the AUTHORS REGISTRY...." The Registry, which has the cooperation of more than 30 organizations of freelancers, last month began doing business with three more blue-chip magazines: TRAVEL & LEISURE, COOKING LIGHT and FOOD & WINE. All three will use the not-for-profit agency to pay separate fees to writers for electronic reuse of articles.
In the top ranks of national travel and food magazines, the chief holdouts are from a single company: CONDE NAST, which still wants contributors to BON APPETIT, GOURMET and CONDE NAST TRAVELER to fork over a parcel of rights, including perpetual e-rights, for a single fee. Food writers, of course, can ignore Bon Appetit and Gourmet in favor of Cooking Light and Food & Wine, among others. Travel markets with terms more reasonable than Conde Nast's include, besides T&L, some of the better airline magazines (such as AMERICAN WAY, Delta's SKY and United's HEMISPHERES), DIVERSION and WESTWAYS. Their contracts have flaws (don't they all?) but are usually negotiable into a very acceptable deal. Conde Nast's isn't.
As usual, ASJA offers all freelancers specfics on contract improvements made by these and other publishers.
Cooking Light (from SOUTHERN PROGRESS, a TIME WARNER company) recently overhauled its basic freelancer's contract, making several laudable changes and adding small payments for electronic and other reuses. But the contract puts no time limit on the electronic license and calls for free reuse in CL's annual anthology. Those are glitches that don't fit with the general reasonableness of the rest of the magazine's terms. They ought to be fixed.
Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine (from AMERICAN EXPRESS PUBLISHING) also get it almost right, offering fees for each electronic use but no time limit. And--a strange one--there's a cap on extra payments for international editions after two such uses. Both provisions seem to say the publisher should keep earning as a piece keeps selling but a writer's income should stop. To its credit, the magazine tells writers who don't like either of those provisions--and no writer should--to cross them out.
American Express has shown good faith recently in another way: A writer who did decline to sign over e-rights reports it took a little shaking, but the company made good on its error in including three articles and a short item by him in online databases. AmEx paid him $2,700.
SMITHSONIAN acts fairly if prodded. For writers who object to giving away database rights, editors now send back a clause reading instead, "Your article will be blocked from appearing on electronic research databases." As a next step, they should get around to sharing the take, as others are now doing.
Smithsonian also has agreed, for some who asked, to qualify the contractual pledge against libel and privacy as "to the best of your knowledge," and apply the tentative indemnification ("You understand that you may be held responsible...") only to court-decreed breaches.
In an ongoing battle, BOSTON GLOBE freelancers received a boost this week when nine writers' organizations e-mailed a joint memo to dozens of Globe editors, explaining why the newspaper's grab for rights is unacceptable and arguing: "When income from extended use and reuse of a newspaper's content accrues to everyone but the very people who created it, something is dreadfully wrong."
The memo continued: "No one wishes to interfere with the ability of the Globe to enter into electronic ventures. The issue is the use and excuse of the coming of the new world of electronic journalism to mask radical, unilateral changes in accepted business practices. The material to be used in this new world should be contracted for and paid for in a reasonable manner, no less than has been done--and continues to be done--in the old."
Those endorsing the memo were American Society of Journalists and Authors, Authors Guild, Boston Globe Freelancers Association, Garden Writers Association of America, International Association of Culinary Professionals (Food Writing and Publishing Section), National Association of Science Writers, National Writers Union, Society of American Travel Writers (Freelance Council) and Washington Independent Writers.
The HARTFORD COURANT unveiled a tough new contract from parent TIMES-MIRROR last December. Apparently, freelancers are saying no in numbers sufficient to have management worried. A new wave of strongarm letters has been mailed, warning writers that if they don't give in their work will no longer be desired. (This even while editors were telling balking freelancers their concerns were being transmitted to management.) The letter misrepresents the contract by implying it has to do only with use "on our web site and in our electronic library." In fact, the contract language goes far beyond that.
Editors are offering to sweeten the pot by saying most article fees will be bumped up by 10 percent. But the way the contract is structured, a business-minded freelancer still wouldn't go near it.
A writer tells of receiving a SCHOLASTIC magazine contract that included a penciled-in add-on fee of 10 percent for "reuse in digital format." In consultation with the editor, the writer restricted electronic use to a specific Web site for one year, and also clarified that the company's standard offer of "no less than 25 percent" for other reuses--electronic or print--would be for each such use. Important changes that ought to be in the boilerplate.
Just one more instance of an all-rights contract clause that isn't unmovable: A writer sends word that a ROBB REPORT editor was easily persuaded to substitute one-time print rights.
FAMILY FUN has polished its contract in several areas after talks between editors and ASJA, but when it comes to the all-important rights clause, the owner (DISNEY) has drawn the line. FamilyFun's contract awkwardly feigns fairness by offering separate payments for rights `i' and `ii'; trouble is, `i' and `ii' add up to nearly everything under the sun. Apparently, no one in editorial could persuade the powers at Disney that the magazine's good reputation with freelancers was at stake...or mattered. So editors are saddled with a contract that no smart freelancer will sign. Word is it's "negotiable," but it remains to be seen what that means.
RODALE isn't holding the line. Although some of its magazines are insisting on all rights (and losing writers in the process), at least one editor has agreed to modify the publisher's hardline terms by providing separate e-rights payment in a regular contributor's year-long agreement; the company gets electronic use only for the year. And one of the company's special publications--a PREVENTION spinoff--is still using a plain First North American Rights contract.
Writer's Digest last month devoted a chunk of its look ahead to what it labeled "THE Issue for Writers in 1997," based on an interview with ASJA's contracts committee chair. The issue? "Rights--electronic and otherwise." Said WD: "It's electronic publishing that has brought the matter to a head."
Many ASJA members and others send a steady stream of contracts, information and scuttlebutt so that these ASJA Contracts Watch dispatches can be as informative as possible. Thanks to all.
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Received on Tue Feb 04 1997 - 16:55:34 GMT
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