Episode 208: If an author doesn't have an agent, should they hire a lawyer?

A People's Guide to Publishing · Apr 27, 2023 · 8m

Most novice authors do not have a lot of familiarity with a contract and do not have an agent, so they both don't know the standards of these agreements or how to read them. So it's entirely too common—several times per month for us—that an author hires a lawyer to read and negotiate these agreements. The trouble is usually that this lawyer often does not specialize in book contracts, or entertainment law at all. So instead of smoothing out the process and knowing the norms and how things work in practice, they catastrophize—almost universally making the situation worse. The number of books…