This post is part of a series about writing with a co-author. To read all my advice about the full process of collaborative writing (including stories and bonus chapters not found here on the blog), read my book, In It Together, a guide to writing with a co-writer without losing your mind.
Very few first-time collaborators think about signing a contract before they begin, but all of them should. In an equal partnership, especially among friends, you might feel like you don’t need a contract yet, but if anyone is writing words on the project, you definitely do. Contracts are friendship saving, because they ensure that everyone has agreed about what they’re getting into. You don’t want to spend hours, weeks, months, even years on a project only to discover that you have vastly different ideas about what you will do with it after the fact.
Your contract may cover lots of things, particularly if you’re in a tiered partnership; when IP lawyers get involved these contracts can grow long enough to make your eyes cross. If you’re in an equal partnership and don’t have high value existing intellectual property (like a mega-selling published series in the setting) you can probably make do with something much simpler, only a few pages long.
There are many sample contracts to be found on the internet. I am not a lawyer, so I can’t give you a foolproof contract, but I will discuss a few points that every collaboration contract should address.
Money
Let’s address the big one first: your contract must state how proceeds from sales of the work will be divided. If you’re in an equal partnership, the share is probably fifty/fifty. If you’re in a tiered partnership, it might be fifty/fifty, but it also might not. Junior partners might be offered an upfront fee or advance on their work in addition to a royalty. They might work for a flat fee and receive no royalties at all. Regardless, take a good long look at the way money is going to be allocated and ask yourself if you’re going to feel good about the way profit will be distributed before you sign and before you invest yourself in the project.
This may seems simple, but there are a few other things you’ll want to consider. If the work requires expenses—like editing, advertising, or cover design—who will pay for those expenses? Will that person be reimbursed, and if so, how? It’s worth taking a minute to think about how you’re going to handle these things in the future and codifying them into the contract, so you don’t have a dispute about them later when there’s an already-written book on the line.
A word to prospective senior partners: if you’re thinking of offering less than fifty percent to your co-writer, you must do so from a position of power. I would never accept less than fifty percent (or a proportional equal share, like 33% in a three-person partnership) unless the senior partner had something significant to offer—like a very large audience and a practically guaranteed sales record. If you are a mega-selling author, you might be able to offer a lower percentage, and your junior partner could be assured that they are going to make a reasonable wage for their labor nevertheless. If your junior partner is undertaking a serious risk that the product will not make much money, you’re doing them a disservice by offering less than fifty percent.
Credit
On this point, equal partners also have it a bit easier. In an equal partnership, both authors are generally credited as the authors of the work, or they select a pseudonym to represent them both. Collaboration contracts generally stipulate that the authors will both refer to themselves as co-authors or co-writers and not claim to be the sole author of the work.
There are a few issues that even equal partners should consider. If both your names are going on the cover, whose will be first? Do you want to use a pseudonym? If so, what will the pseudonym be? Lots of co-authors use them (like Christina Lauren, the romance-writing duo whose first names are Christina and Lauren), but many also do not. For the Five Lands series, Megan, Lauren, and I elected to use a pseudonym so as not to clutter the front of the book with three names and muddy the branding. Whatever you decide, putting it in writing upfront will help prevent disagreements later on.
In tiered partnerships, there are a few other considerations. Will your names be the same size on the cover? If not, how much smaller is the junior partner’s name allowed to be? Should your name be at least forty percent the size of your co-writer’s? Fifty? Larger or smaller? If you don’t get this in writing now, publishers may not honor it later, so it’s good to have it agreed upon (in writing!) in advance. In my original contract with Dragonsteel, I was offered equal size for my name on the Skyward novellas. I appreciate the respect Brandon showed me by offering this to me . . . but I’m well aware that his name sells books, and as I like selling books, I negotiated for his name to be bigger than mine. What matters ultimately is not the size of the names on the cover, but the fact that you agree to how each writer will be credited upfront, in advance, and in writing.
Intellectual Property
Who is going to hold the copyright for your book? Who will own the IP and therefore the rights to write other books in the setting? In an equal partnership this might be held equally, but it also might not. The important thing is that you both agree in advance, so you know what you’ll be allowed to do with the setting if the partnership ends, and more importantly, what won’t be permitted. In a tiered partnership this is even more complicated; if the senior partner has other books in the setting, they may want a longer clause with additional protections to make it crystal clear what the junior partner has rights to and what they don’t.
There is a lot more to IP than just print rights. What about film? What about merchandising? How about foreign rights? All of these things need to be addressed in the contract so everyone knows who owns which pieces of intellectual property. Laying this out in advance will not only protect your relationship with your partner, but can save you from lawsuits in the future.
Control of Decision Making
It’s important to decide in advance how decisions will be made, especially for anything that isn’t codified in the contract at the time of signing. If it’s an equal partnership, the contract should stipulate that decisions will be made jointly. If, in the equal partnership, partners have specific jobs and decision-making responsibilities, those should also be outlined to avoid future confusion.
In a tiered partnership, no doubt should be left about exactly how much control, if any, the junior partner has over the final product and the future publishing decisions related to it. Make sure you feel good about whatever the decision-making arrangement will be, and think long and hard about how it might impact you in the future.
Non-disclosure Agreements
Most equal partnership contracts don’t require NDAs. If you are new or midlist writers, it’s not necessary to contractually prevent partners from discussing your business dealings outside of the partnership. In tiered partnerships with established writers, however, it’s common practice for junior partners to sign non-disclosure agreements stipulating that they won’t talk about the details of the project publicly. These NDAs can be anything from waiting to announce project details until the senior partner announces them first to never speaking about the existence of the project for eternity. The key is to be sure you’re ready to abide by the terms once you sign them, so read your NDA carefully.
Kill Clause
The contract should address what will happen if the partnership ends, and what the obligations (if any) of each partner will be in that event. Be sure you know how to get out of the arrangement if necessary, and what rights you keep (and which you lose) if you decide to do so.
Please Read Your Contract
This should go without saying, but please read every word of your contract, both when you receive a draft to negotiate, and before you sign the final version. Make sure you understand everything it says, and if you don’t, seek clarification before signing. You can and should negotiate any wording that you’re uncomfortable with; any good partner will listen to your concerns and make concessions where they can. If they can’t, it’s better that you know in advance that the situation was untenable than to sign an untenable contract and later have to extricate yourself.
A Word about Work-For-Hire
Contracts are important in any collaboration, but when you’re entering into work-for-hire, especially in cases where the primary benefit to you is monetary, you want to make absolutely sure that the rights you are giving away are rights you feel comfortable losing. In cases where you receive no rights to intellectual property, no royalties, and no credit, you want to be certain that your payment structure is clear and tied to measurable goals and outcomes. And then you want to produce words and let them go without becoming too attached to them, because after you have fulfilled your contractual obligations, they aren’t yours anymore, and you only have the rights compensation that are outlined in your contract.
In these kinds of partnerships you can ignore everything I said earlier about irresistible deliciousness. You are not looking for creative spark. If you get a little spark out of the project, that’s wonderful, but in this case, the benefit to you is the money.
And there’s nothing wrong with that! When you are a professional, money is a powerful motivator! No one looks down on plumbers for charging for their work, and no one has a right to tell you that you have to prioritize creative fervor over money. We all need to support ourselves (and any family that might be dependent on us), and that’s a good and noble thing to do. But if what you’re getting out of the collaboration is money, make sure the money is going to be worth the work you put in or you may end up signing on to a project you regret.
What If Things Change?
If you leave anything out of the contract, or if your circumstances change and you both consent to change the terms, you’re not necessarily locked in. You can create a contract addendum at any time to add further stipulations or change previous ones, so long as you both consent and sign the addendum as well.
For example, it’s possible that you’re not sure if you’ll want to publish under a pseudonym, and want to wait to make that decision. In that case, you can put a clause in your contract that says something like, “Co-authors may, by mutual agreement, publish the work under a single pseudonym.” This ensures that, even if you haven’t made the decision yet, you’ve stipulated up front that you both have to mutually agree.
When Megan, Lauren and I first signed our collaboration agreement, we didn’t know if we would sell our book traditionally or decide to self-publish, so we threw in a line that we would make those decisions in the future “by mutual consent” and went on our way. Later, when we decided to self-publish, we signed a contract addendum that outlined exactly how we would handle setting up our publishing business, and elaborated on how expenses would be handled.
You don’t have to know everything today, but you do want to be sure you’re happy with everything in the contract at the time that you sign it. You can change things later, but only if you both agree to sign an addendum, so make sure that you’re okay living with the terms of your contract forever, because it’s possible it will always be in force.
Dealing with contracts may not be the most pleasant part of collaboration, but having it negotiated and signed in advance (or right now if you’ve already begun!) can save you both personal and legal trouble in the future. It may feel like asking for a signed contract shows a lack of trust, but a written agreement protects all parties, and ultimately is another way that partners can show mutual respect for each other, by making sure that everyone is comfortable with the terms and protected in writing.
