Talk:Draft Contract 1

From Maze

General

Casey: I'm going to change my credited name to "C. E. B. Reas" instead of "Casey Reas"

Casey: I know that Nick has some great ideas about the book's printing. We need to get that embedded into the contract or it won't happen.

Nick: Absolutely right, Casey. I am going to speak with Doug this week and see what we can do. I will meet with Yasuyo (design manager of MIT Press) if necessary to see what she will back and what she can get production to agree to.

Nick: Also, I should note that I had the agreements for Twisty Little Passages and The New Media Reader reviewed by a lawyer from the Author's Guild. (Back when I was a member of that organization.) I will check through everything noted in that review and will see what applies here.

Section 5

Casey: "October 1, 2010, a first draft manuscript of the book". I thought we were shooting for the end of December for the first draft?

Jeremy: I agree, both dates Oct 1 and Nov 15 look wrong...?

Jeremy: "Monies advanced under the agreement" ? Does this apply ?

Nick: "Monies advanced" does not apply. We had optimistic dates in the original proposal, as was appropraite. Now we do need to change the dates so that we provide the first draft MS for reviewers in December. What date in December seems best to us? If we are early enough that it can be sent out for review over the break, that will be helpful.

Section 11

Casey: Do any of us have the needed skill to properly Index the book? We faked the Processing book and the publishers for my other books have provided the service. Maybe the MIT Press veterans know what to do.

Jeremy: Re indexing, I'm not a professional indexer, but I actively enjoy indexing and I consider myself a talented amateur. I'd be happy to assume that as part of my book project workload -- or something similar. I suspect we'll need some kind of textual apparatus for this project to make it navigable.

Nick: Jeremy, I have to do my best to persuade you that this is not the right attitude to take. We would rather have your effort put into things that cannot be done by someone outside the project. In my experience, MIT Press will generally index books (by hiring an indexer) if authors request it in the contract. They had The New Media Reader, Twisty Little Passages, and Racing the Beam indexed in this way. Although you might point to specific omissions or amusing entries, the indexers generally did a good job. I believe we should request that the book be indexed at the Press's expense, by someone the Press hires. We are already undertaking an very unusual project with many editorial and writing responsibilities, and this does not need to be part of our project as authors.

Section 21

Jeremy: As I read it the reversion of rights clause is *not* limited to the time window of the 30 day buy-back option, but I personally feel that line could be more clear that notice of reversion of rights is open-ended.

Section 26

Casey: I'd prefer the royalties to go to a charity as we discussed. I don't have a strong preference.

Nick: I am proposing a specific charity on the list right after I finish making this edit.