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. (Update: I have a meeting with Doug September 7.)
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.
Mark S.: Speaking of the book's design, yes, definitely, ours is a perfect project to push the limits of design. Callouts or sidebars are the very least we should be working with, especially if we still want to pursue the "gallery" idea. I still want to push to include a variorum, and it'd be awesome to emulate the look and design of some of the classic variorum out there. (Tangential side note, I am stunned to find, just now, the MLA has a 200 page "Shakespeare Variorum Handbook: A Manual of Editorial Practice." I might want to learn some of their best practices...)
John: I don't know how other people (or the press) feel about it, but I'd like the book to be CC licensed, with a non-DRMed electronic copy made available by MIT Press upon publication. I think this is in line with both the spirit of the original program's distribution and the collective process we're using to create the book and donate the proceeds.
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 6 (Size of the Work)
Noah: "30 B&W images". Black and White may be overly limiting for this work. We've talked about color a good deal so far.
Nick: The cost of including color plates is substantial, and the program we're writing about (the basic 10 PRINT itself) produces monochrome output. If we want full color, we need to determine how many color plates are needed and carefully justify these to MIT Press. If having color images would be a nice supplement rather than an essential part of the book, we'll probably be asked to place them on a website.
Nick: I am going to ask if we can print in two colors, however. That should help us illustrate how some 10 PRINT-like programs work and look.
Section 9 (Proof)
Noah: Is it okay for us to get a friend or two to help proofread? It's one of my pet peeves that so many modern books have typos.
Nick: We can do that. MIT Press also will do copy editing. This section is just there to make it clear that one of our responsibilities is proofreading.
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 12 (Basic Royalties)
Noah: What about splitting the royalties with the PlayPower foundation? I'm not sure about all of you, I think you mostly have academic positions, but I've currently got no income. It would be a great incentive for me to retain some of the money we earn.
Nick: I doubt that MIT Press would agree to splitting royalties among 11 authors and a nonprofit foundation. It would lead to a huge amount of accounting work, maintaining current addresses for many people, etc. The total royalty amount we are talking about is probably going to be no more than $2000 in our best year. That is a significant amount for a nonprofit, as I can tell you - I would love for the ELO to have a donation like this. But how much would it be for one of us, under a 50% for charity scheme? Well, first of all, we'd have to figure out how to divide royalties between us. It does not immediately seem fair to me to split the amount evenly 11 ways, given the work I've put into developing the proposal and organizing the project. (This is another discussion and hassle that we avoid if we determine a charity, agreeable to everyone, to which we can donate the royalties.) For now, though, let's assume we were to split the royalties evenly. 50% (the author's share) of $2000 is $1000. Divided 11 ways, that's $91. So, in our best year, we'll expect less than $100 per author in this scheme. As a source of annual income, that does not seem very significant whatever else one is doing to make money. If all of it were donated to a new nonprofit, however, it would not only allow us and MIT Press to avoid accounting work and figuring out how to divide the royalties amongst ourselves, it would be of substantial benefit to a cause that (I think) we all believe in.
Noah: Also, this section does not cover electronic sales of the book. They are in section 15. If I were organizing this document, I would put them in this section.
John: I'm in the same position as Noah, but if it's going to be an insignificant amount anyway then I'd say to go the donation route. However, it does strengthen my desire to see some kind of non-exclusive license applied to the finished work.
Nick: I should note - we do not have to donate royalties at all. We can ask for them to be split among us. No one has said that they strongly feel that we should donate them. However, I don't think it will be tenable to donate 50% of them and have the rest split among us.
Section 15
John: Very much against the use of DRM on eBooks, I think (c) should be reversed to state that such technologies cannot be applied to this book.
Nick: I have actually asked my MIT Press contracts to be modified to remove the Press's contractual obligation to DRM my books. The Press was rather puzzled by this. But my position was that, while I don't want to interfere with MIT Press doing its business in an ordinary way, I also don't want to have them use DRM *because of me.*
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.
John: Given that I'm not sure who would be exercising the buy-back, I'd suggest it automatically revert to CC-by-nc-sa upon the work going out of print (assuming it is not licensed that way from the beginning, which would be my preference).
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.
Mark S.: I'm all for the Playpower Foundation Nick proposed. It seems like a perfect match for us.
Noah: See my comments on Section 12. I love the PlayPower foundation and have contributed plenty of work to them in the past, but I need to eat and pay rent, too.
John: PlayPower is fine with me.
General
Nick: Ian indicated to me by email that he has nothing to add here,
