Must read…RED ALERT
Originally posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware and reblogged via TRSA:
SFWA’s Contracts Committee has recently been seeing a proliferation of contracts from small magazines, and a very few established markets, that license all derivative rights in perpetuity.
This is a red flag for a number of reasons, even if these rights are licensed non-exclusively.
A derivative work is defined by copyright law as “a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.”
This sort of rights grab is by no means normal; magazines generally only take very limited first publication and archival rights for a limited time.
Licensing the right to create derivative works can and mostly likely will interfere with the author’s right to exploit…
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Claire Plaisted - Multi-Genre Author 