The growth in the market for books offers new opportunities for authors and publishers. It also brings added complexity to the business of negotiation, and to the drafting of formal contracts once the salient terms have been settled. Publishing Agreements gives authors, agents, and publishers an invaluable basic stock of precedents on which the publishing process can be founded. The book also places salutary emphasis on the importance of developing further the concept of copyright in the interests of authors and publishers–and, not incidentally, in the interests of the reading public. Charles Clark's extensive commentary on the precedents, and his notes and appendices, are a distillation of practical experience. They illuminate points of detail in the precedents themselves, and relate the detail to the wider context of the publisher's social role. While this manual is based on British publishing practice, the principles hold for the American reader; moreover the extensive trans-Atlantic trade in books is the ground for much of the discussion, and there is frequent reference to American conditions and customs. No other work on the subject of publishing agreements gives such thorough consideration to the practical effect of the language adopted in contracts. Authors will find this book a boon, and no publisher or literary agent can afford to be without it.
