As an author, you do yourself a mighty disservice if you get excited to receive a contract and don’t read AND understand what you signed. There are a lot of authors in this industry who have been ripped off and hurt when a publisher closed it’s doors. There are lots of authors hurt every royalty payout day because they signed a contract that gave the publisher the right to basically charge that author for the cost of doing business.

What you know – or rather what you don’t know – about your publisher and their business practices and their contract clauses can hurt you. Maybe not today, but at some time it could. If you get a contract, and you don’t know what those clauses mean, you need to ask someone who does. Not someone at that house, but an independent someone. Find out the truth. Know who and what you are dealing with before you give your baby – your manuscript – into their keeping. Make sure you know how much of that cover price you are entitled to or whether most of it will go to the publisher for things like their credit card fees and shipping costs.

Take a run over here to Mary Winter’s blog where she shows you what kinds of clauses in a contract are huge red flags for an author. This blog post could save you money and heartache. I advise you to read it, bookmark it, and use it as a guide to helping you discover what you should know.

What You Know is a post from: Lex Valentine, Author

I suppose now, Declan and Althea (whose name will revert back to my original name choice of Elysia) will be my favorite characters because they were the ones to be accepted by a publisher first.  Actually, Lex and Alaric are still my fave characters, even though Alaric isn’t my character.  No other characters could ever take their place. However, Declan and Elysia are truly special. I knew it as I was writing them.

Now, I think I’m running out of words to convey my excitement. So I’ll just leave you a link to the post I have on Sunlight Sucks today. It’s called Vindicated and it’s about reading my email in bed and discovering I’d been offered a contract. So, you all head on over there to read that post and I’ll just kick back and do some more Snoopy dancing.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Snoopy Dancing is a post from: Lex Valentine, Author