A colleague from a state far away offered me an opportunity to edit his book for him.
The catch was that he didn’t have the funds to pay for the work, and instead promised to share the royalties when the book was sold. Now let me say at the outset, the brother has a great book, or will have, when it is edited properly. It is not an incoherent heap of mess that needs to be pulled apart sentence-by-sentence, nay, word-by-word like some of the mess that I’ve seen over the years. No. This is a serious (though skewed) attempt at a serious book about a serious subject that has the potential of being taken seriously by critics. It might even make some serious duckies if it hit the right people at the right time and God willed it to be successful.
Problem is, I don’t have time to edit a book for free, and frankly, the good brother is not looking to make money from his book (so he says) and has promised royalties to other “editors,” but is concerned about getting it published nonetheless.
So I have incentive to edit the book for what reason? What royalty? Ten percent of nothing is nothing. Where is the good faith that is so necessary for a good contract and business relationship?
Anyway. If you hadn’t gathered from the previous post, service contracts over the internet can be tricky. And unless your client is in the same state, it will be a problem if the client decides not to pay you. Getting him in your own jurisdiction for a trial or small claims court, or getting yourself to your client’s state for the same will not be easy, and a lawsuit will more than likely be cost prohibitive for a simple service contract. So write it off and kiss the payment and client good-bye.
A future payment arrangement (like a royalty) makes a business relationship and contract even more unpromising. Why?
1) There is no guarantee that the work will sell or make money.
2) If the contract is not drafted properly, there will be issues as to what the royalty actually applies to.
3) The editor would be at the mercy of the author when making a deal with a publisher.
4) The editor would have a hard time making sure he’s getting paid for everything that is due to him.
5) If the author does not pay, the editor has no recourse with the publisher because the editor is not part of the contract between the author and publisher. There is no legal relationship between the publisher and the editor.
Editing takes much time and effort to do a good job that goes beyond simple proofreading, and by golly, doing it for free just makes no sense.
What to do in a situation like this then? Ask for shared copyrights and authorship. Then the editor has as much incentive as the author to get it published, to promote it properly, to make sure nothing “bad” happens to it. The editor would be in on the contracts with the publisher/agent/producer and could get his royalty or sale as promised, if in fact there is one.
No, there is no guarantee that a book will make money. But it would be nice if there was actually a chance that it could sell. That’s what the editor would be contracting for. A chance.
A final comment: Years in business, bounced checks, and the occasional non-payment has led me to the conclusion that all other things being equal, losing a customer because of money stinks. It is a far more expensive problem than the face of the check and related bank charges.
For example, you might be tempted to say “Good riddance!” to a check-bouncer, but think about it. Chances are, if the check never had bounced and you had a “no checks” policy in the first place, the customer would probably still be doing business with you.
This, IMHO, is as important a reason to have a “pay as you go” or “progress payment” policy for your online business as any other.
Posted by debmcnichol 
