What should I check in a small press contract before I sign away my rights?

Before you sign a small press contract, check eight things in this order: what rights you are granting and for how long, how you get them back, what the royalty is calculated on, when and how you get paid, who controls audio and translation and film, whether the press has a claim on your next book, and what the warranty and non compete language obligates you to do. If the reversion clause is vague, nothing else on the list matters much, because a vague reversion clause is how a book stays locked up at a press that has stopped selling it.

Small press contracts are not usually predatory. They are usually short, written years ago by someone who is now gone, and full of terms that made sense when the press only sold paperbacks at regional festivals. The problems come from silence, not malice. A clause that does not mention audio does not mean audio is yours.

Grant of rights: territory, language, format and term

The grant clause is the spine of the contract. It answers four questions, and you should be able to state each answer in one sentence after reading it.

Territory. World, World English, or North America. A small press that distributes through Ingram and sells on Amazon is functionally selling worldwide already, so a World English grant is normal. World including all languages is a bigger ask, and you should want to know what the press has actually done with foreign rights before, not what it hopes to do.

Language. English only, or all languages. If the press has never sold a translation, granting all languages hands them an asset they cannot monetize. Ask directly: which translations have you licensed in the last three years, and to whom.

Format. Print, ebook, audio, and sometimes large print and serial. Watch for catch all wording like "in all forms and media now known or hereafter devised." That phrase is standard and not automatically bad, but paired with a weak reversion clause it is how a book disappears.

Term. The three common shapes are term of copyright, a fixed number of years, and a fixed term with renewal. A fixed seven year term with automatic reversion is the cleanest thing a small press can offer you. Term of copyright is only acceptable if reversion is strong and specific, because reversion becomes your only exit.

Keep reading: What does it actually cost me to publish a novel independently in the United States?

The reversion clause and what counts as out of print

Old contracts define out of print as the book being unavailable for sale. Print on demand means the book is never unavailable for sale, so under 1990s wording a title selling four copies a year never reverts.

The fix is a sales threshold. You want language that says rights revert on written request if the book sells fewer than a stated number of copies across all formats in two consecutive royalty periods. Ask for a specific number. A press publishing literary fiction might reasonably agree to something in the range of fifty to a hundred copies per year across all editions. That number is a negotiation, not a standard, and you should treat any figure you are quoted as that press's own preference rather than an industry rule.

Also check three mechanics around reversion:

• Does reversion require your written request, or is it automatic? Request based is fine, but note it in your own records so you actually send the letter.
• How long does the press have to respond or to cure? Sixty to ninety days is common.
• Do licenses already granted survive reversion? They usually do, and that is reasonable, but you want existing licenses listed in a schedule so you know what you are inheriting.

One more line worth requesting: on reversion, the press assigns to you any existing cover art license, or you get a stated option to buy the cover files. Otherwise you regain a book and lose its face.

Royalty basis: net receipts versus list price

This is where a headline number misleads. A press offering 50 percent of net can pay less than one offering 10 percent of list, depending entirely on how "net" is defined.

Work the arithmetic yourself. Take a paperback with a $17.99 list price sold through a distributor at a 55 percent trade discount. The press receives roughly $8.10. If the contract defines net receipts as amounts actually received, a 12 percent net royalty pays you about $0.97 per copy. A 7 percent of list royalty on the same book pays $1.26. These are illustrative figures using assumed discount and royalty rates, not quoted market standards, but the shape holds: net rates need to be roughly double list rates to produce the same money.

The deep discount clause deserves particular attention. Many contracts halve the royalty on sales above a stated discount. If that threshold is set at 50 percent, and the press's standard trade discount is 55 percent, then the reduced rate is not an exception. It is your actual rate on nearly every copy.

Accounting periods, reserves against returns and audit rights

Three numbers govern when money reaches you: how often the press accounts, how long after the period closes it pays, and how much it withholds against returns.

Semiannual accounting with a ninety day lag means a copy sold in February can be paid in September. Quarterly accounting with a sixty day lag is far better and entirely feasible on modern distribution reporting. Ask for it.

The reserve against returns is legitimate: bookstores really can return unsold stock. What is not legitimate is an uncapped reserve held indefinitely. Ask for a ceiling, say 20 percent of the period's royalties, and full liquidation within two accounting periods. If the press sells mostly through print on demand and direct channels, returns exposure is low and the reserve should be low with it.

Audit rights are the clause nobody expects to use. Keep it anyway: the right to examine records once a year at your expense, with the press paying audit costs if an error above a stated threshold, often 5 percent, is found in your favor.

Keep reading: What is it really like to run a submission cycle while holding a full time job?

Subsidiary rights: audio, film, translation and who controls them

Audio is the live question. A small press that grants you no audio rights and produces no audiobook has parked an asset. If the press wants audio, ask for a use it or lose it provision: audio rights revert if no audiobook is published within eighteen or twenty four months of the print publication date.

Film and dramatic rights should generally stay with you. A press with no film agent relationships adds nothing there. If it insists on a share, cap the participation and require your written approval on any deal.

For translation and other licensed rights the press does control, check the split. Fifty fifty on translation is common when the press is genuinely working the rights. Also require that you approve any license, or at minimum are notified in writing before signature.

The option clause on your next book

An option clause is not automatically unfair, but it must be bounded. Submitting your next book length work of fiction, with the press having thirty days from receipt of the complete manuscript to make an offer, is workable. Submitting your next three works, with no time limit and no defined trigger, is not.

Insist on three boundaries. Narrow the scope to one next work in the same category. Put a clock on the response, thirty to forty five days. And strike any matching right, which lets the press match another publisher's offer, because a matching right makes you unsellable elsewhere: no acquiring editor wants to bid against a guaranteed match.

See how DraftAndQuery handles this for independent authorship and publishing

Author copies, discounts and warranty and indemnity language

Author copies are a small clause with real annual cost. Ten to twenty five free copies is typical, plus the right to buy more at the press's best discount, usually 40 to 50 percent off list. Check whether copies you buy and resell yourself earn a royalty. Often they do not, and you want to know that before you price your festival table.

The warranty is where you promise the work is yours, is not defamatory, and does not infringe. That is reasonable. What is not reasonable is an indemnity that makes you liable for any claim, whether or not it has merit. Ask for two edits: limit indemnity to claims finally sustained by judgment or settled with your consent, and cap your total liability at the amounts you have received under the contract. Ask also whether the press's media liability insurance names you as an additional insured. Some do.

Non compete wording that limits what you publish elsewhere

Look for the phrase "any work that competes with" or "any work of a similar nature." Both are far too broad. The version you want is narrow and time limited: no work that is a direct sequel or prequel using the same principal characters, published within nine months either side of the publication date. Short fiction, essays, work in other genres and work under other names should be explicitly carved out.

Working the checklist without losing the deal

Take the eight headings above, put them in one document, and write the press's actual answer beside each with the clause number. Missing answers become your question list, sent as one numbered email. Bad answers get marked ask or walk. Realistically a small press will concede two or three points, so decide in advance which three matter most. For most authors those are reversion, the deep discount rate and the option clause.

Then keep the signed version somewhere you will find it in four years, alongside the sales statements that prove your reversion threshold has been crossed. That is precisely the moment when contract paperwork tends to have vanished into an old laptop. DraftAndQuery keeps each manuscript's version history, the presses that hold it, the response deadlines and the follow up dates in one place, so when the royalty statement shows two consecutive periods below your threshold, you already know the clause number, the notice period, and the address to send the letter to.