I've been informally involved in helping several first-time authors negotiate non-restrictive terms with their publishers. As I've found myself supplying the authors with the same arguments, vocabulary, and statistics, it's become clear that there is a need for general guides to help authors and other artists have this conversation with their publishers. Along with the guide would be model contract language: clauses to be used (either directly or as examples) in publishing contracts, to express non-restrictive distribution terms in a way that is still compatible with the publishers' need for timely delivery, quality control, author cooperation in marketing and revision, etc.
One pattern that stands out from our conversations with both publishers and authors is that deep unfamiliarity with open distribution environments is often the biggest sticking point — not fear of anything specific, simply fear of the unknown, along with a dearth of vocabulary for talking about the new relationship between author and publisher, author and audience, and publisher and audience. When these things are provided, the conversation often goes much more smoothly.
This project will make use of the Creative Commons case studies and the Digital Foundations negotiation HOWTO, both of which provide some (but not all) of what we envision for this guide. It will also use the from the Sita Distribution Project as an example of how audiences behave when given informed freedom.
Outputs: