I just recently had an odd experience with a publishing house, and I wrote about it on my blog.
This publishing house wanted me to sign over my pen name to them along with my book, for five years.
Has anyone else had similar experiences?
When I had to deal with a screen rights contract about a year ago, I found having the contract interpreted by a lawyer to be pretty helpful when I had to decide what to do.
I'm definitely not an expert, but the longest I've ever signed a novel to a publisher is 3 years. (And in that case, even that was too long.)
If you're feeling hesitant or dubious, get an attorney's input. When contracts in this industry are translated into actual English, it's usually pretty apparent whether they're good or bad for you.
I decided not to sign, they refused to move on the name issue at all. They called it a trust thing, but I found it more of a lack of trust.
Yeah five years is a long time, I'm pretty good with the technical lingo over all, and part of my studies in school (Science background) was how to read documents full of jargon you do not understand.
My big issue was signing a pen name away to them. What if after the first book they didn't want my second in the series? I'd have to sit on the manuscript for five whole years before I could take it somewhere else to get published.
