“Our job is to partner with you on a journey to reconcile your vision of your book with the way your prospective readers will see it.”
The relationship between an editor and a writer should be collaborative, we’ve all been told time and time again. It seems to make sense on the surface, almost to the point of common sense. The problem, though, is that it’s dead wrong. Even more than that, as a writer, it’s a potentially dangerous and expensive mistake to make. Let me explain…
“A developmental editor will take your manuscript and work with the content itself. If needed, they might reshape your work and rearrange sentences to make the book flow together better. This type of editor helps an author find their voice and help refine their vision.”
So an editor of this type, or one that engages in this type of action, precipitates significant changes to the finished product. Do you think it’s fair to say the end result of such a relationship is a collaborative work? That the editor’s contributions are an essential component in the finished creative work for sale? So would I.
“Do editors have a copyright interest in the edited version of the manuscript? Maybe, maybe not, but it is a weapon in the editor’s collection arsenal that should not be ignored.”
This is from a blog for editors openly discussing whether editors have a copyright interest in the finished edit of a work. It’s not a theoretical construct, it’s an actual thing being openly advocated for amongst some editors. Albeit, editors in this case who have been stiffed by their clients, but I don’t think they’d be wrong in doing so under any circumstance. Although, I find the author’s stance that as little as inserting one comma would give an editor a copyright interest is maybe a little bit of an overreach. Appropriate stress due to “maybe” there. It well could. What I have no personal doubt of is that, if you’re making substantive content changes at the behest or recommendation of an editor, you most certainly are giving them a copyright interest.
So why aren’t we seeing courtrooms filled with editors making copyright claims? Because it’s something that was largely irrelevant in the past, and people’s perceptions haven’t quite caught up with reality yet. When most books went through publishers and most editors were employed by those publishers, the copyright interest of the work product of the editor belonged to the publisher. There was little reason for anyone to enforce it. Even after publishers started relying more and more on freelance editors, you can be sure their agreements with those editors contained work-for-hire language, meaning their work product, and any subsequent copyright interest, still belonged to the publishers.
The rights were there but everyone’s interests, as they were aware of them, generally flowed in the same direction so they were rarely, if ever, expressed. That’s why we think of editors as collaborative but not to the extent of a copyright claim, even though, particularly with deep substantive editing, it’s difficult for me to find a rational reason why they wouldn’t that isn’t based on the assumption that they’ve never had one. It’s not that it didn’t exist, but that the nature of the industry itself repressed their claim, likely without most of them even realizing it.
So what’s changed? Everything. Now we have independent writers hiring freelance editors and designers for all manner of tasks. We have writers selling print only rights to publishers and retaining ebook rights to publish themselves. We have the 35 year rights termination procedure passed into law in the ’70s only now coming into use. Everyone’s interests are no longer flowing in the same direction. Little things that were insignificant in the past because the system inherently suppressed them, like any potential copyright claim for editors, can now bubble up through the cracks these changes have opened in the industry’s very foundations. Just because we haven’t seen it doesn’t mean we won’t.
Self Publishers and Independent Contractors
Let me just say this, if you’re doing any freelance work yourself or hiring independent contractors for things with any copyright implications at all, you had better know the law relating to work-for-hire and the IRS and Agency definitions of “employee” inside and out. I see a ton of articles about how to pick an editor or how to pick a designer directed at self publishers. What I don’t see is nearly enough articles explaining how not to screw yourself on the contractual relationships with those contractors.
“(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. (17 U.S.C. § 101)”
–From U.S. Copyright Act of 1976
Work-for-hire is a fairly simple concept on the surface. If you are an employee, any work product of doing your job, and any resulting copyright interests, belong to your employer. “Employee” is a little more complicated than just if you’re on the payroll and they’re paying payroll taxes on you, although those are considerations. Whether you are legally regarded as an employee depends on the nature of the relationship. The more the employer controls the terms of your work; the times you work, the equipment you use, where you work, etc; the more likely you are to be deemed an employee regardless of how they’re paying you.
The second part of work-for-hire, and the one you really need to pay attention to, is that the work must fit into one of those categories listed in the quote and be expressed in writing. The and is the crucial part there. If you are an independent contractor and there’s no written work-for-hire agreement, it doesn’t exist. This means whoever contracted you has limited use of the work per the terms of the contract and all copyright interests remain with you. The written agreement is not optional. No contract, no work-for-hire. And believe me, as someone who’s done my share of independent contractor work, it’s extremely useful to be aware of its absence in your agreements. Here’s a link to a pdf of the U.S. Copyright Office circular that explains work-for-hire, and the criteria for employee determination. If you don’t already know it forwards and backwards, read it now.
The point of this is, simply, don’t be stupid. Know the law and protect yourself. Understand that everything is different about the nature of your relationship to an editor you contract versus one you work with who was also contracted by the same third party publisher. And I mean everything, right down to the legal implications of the structure of your business arrangements.
Do editors have a copyright interest? I think they do but I don’t know absolutely. That’s for a judge to decide at some point. But do you want to be the one standing in court across from that judge when he tells you they do? I sure as hell don’t. Simple work-for-hire language in your agreements with any independent contractors who are contributing anything creative to your final work for sale will make it a moot point. Even if a clear ruling is made that they do, you, through the work-for-hire language, would own that copyright interest in the work they did for you.
If you go around leaving holes in your agreements with people, you’re going to fall into one. Know the law, use it, protect yourself and your interests. You can be damn sure others will.
The 35 Year Termination Rule
We’re just now entering an era where authors can have their rights reverted 35 years from publication just by filing some paperwork. This applies to any work after January 1, 1978, so we aren’t very far down the road on what this will mean. I expect we’ll see publishers inundated with these things in the coming years and, eventually, we’ll see some long-term lucrative works they really don’t want to give up in the firing line.
In the past, rights reversions were generally one of two things; done through an out of print clause for a book the publisher’s been getting nothing from, or a buy back where the author pays the publisher for the reversion. This new termination rule is different in that it clearly forces publishers to give up rights against their will with no recourse. If you don’t think they’ve got lawyers pouring all over their contracts and the various intricacies of copyright law to find a workaround, you’re kidding yourself.
Here’s another place where a copyright interest for editors might turn up in the future. Publishers never had any reason to acknowledge such an interest, particularly since they owned all those interests anyway through work-for-hire. But now, faced with losing money-making properties for nothing, they very suddenly find themselves with such an interest. But it shouldn’t matter because the rights are reverting at 35 years, anyway, right? Well, no, not really.
Where a typical copyright term is life of the author +70 years, work-for-hire is different; 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation. More than that, work-for-hire is not eligible for the 35 year termination. Yes, you may get your rights reverted but the publisher, through the work-for-hire work product of editors, may still retain a copyright interest in the final product you’ve been selling for over three decades. With that, they could potentially stop you from publishing that version, or licensing the rights to that version to another publisher. More likely, I’d expect they’ll use it as a nuclear option to negotiate a new deal with them at better terms.
Termination may not be what we think it is, all because folks weren’t paying enough attention to small little contract provisions like work-for-hire. You know who was paying attention? Publishers. Or do you think it’s just a coincidence they happen to own all the rights to any possible editor copyright interest for damn near every single significant book of the past 40 years? Harper Collins just won a lawsuit claiming to have bought ebook rights in 1971, for God’s sake! Their contracts may be onerous but they’re not a leaky ship full of loopholes by any means.
This may be something to keep in mind for future negotiations; provisions that keep any work-for-hire copyright interests created in producing the work attached to the rights for the purposes of any reversions. It’s something to consider.
Print Only Publishing Deals
When I first heard about Hugh Howey’s print-only deal a couple years ago, the first thing that popped into my head was, “how is that going to work?” I have questions and maybe Howey, who’s been very forthcoming in a lot of ways, or someone else out there who’s cut one of these deals can answer at some point at their leisure. Enquiring minds want to know…
What’s the deal with editing? Did the print publisher do an edit of their own? Did they just use your final edit you’ve used in your ebooks? If they did do an edit, did you use that in your ebooks, and if so, is there language in your contract that allows that? Or are there two separate edits out there, their’s for print and your’s for ebook? What happens when the rights revert at 10 years or whatever the time limit is? Does the final edit revert too or just the rights to the original before the edit? Does the contract address this at all? I could probably think of a few more but that about sums it up.
The print-only deal where you publish the same material in a different format simultaneously on your own didn’t exist even five years ago. It’s added a layer of complications to what was a fairly simple process. Who knows what kind of holes may open up? There’s no possible way we can foresee all the potential risks such arrangements may bring about. Unintended consequences are a bitch.
If we presume for a moment that editors, especially of the deep, substantive variety, have a copyright interest, then someone owns that. It’s either the editor themselves, the publisher or the author through work-for-hire. It might be a good idea to know who, and a better one to make sure, iron-clad in writing, that it’s you.
One of the great selling points of self publishing is that you keep control, you retain your rights. That’s true, so don’t encumber them unnecessarily through lax independent contractor agreements or because you don’t fully understand work-for-hire or copyright law. It may be that all of this, even the very concept of editors having a copyright interest, is speculative and will never come to pass as a significant issue. But as I look at what role editors are increasingly asked to play, and as I read the particulars of the law, I’m fairly convinced that they do, at least in some circumstances.
This could ultimately have implications reaching much farther than self publishing. We, as independents, can solve this problem by inserting clear work-for-hire provisions in our contractor agreements. But what about the matter of that copyright interest being owned by the publisher through their agreements independent of us? That’s a different kettle of fish, and much harder to protect from. Especially if most of us don’t even realize it’s a danger.
Intellectual property is the 21st Century gold rush. What they found back then was the rush very quickly was followed by claim jumping. Some of it was criminalized, but not all. I’m in favor of protecting myself at every possible angle. You just never can tell where those claim jumpers might look next.
Dan Meadows is a writer living on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. Follow him on Twitter @watershedchron
The Watershed Chronicle 
Thank you for citing my article. However, you misstate my position by only quoting the few sentences. A careful reading of the essay should make clear that I believe the editor has a copyright interest:
1. Only in the edited version, not in the original version as submitted by the author for editing, and
2. The editor’s copyright interest disappears completely once the editor has been paid for the editing work — regardless of whether the author accepts the changes made/suggested by the editor.
I have always maintained that the author is free to discard the edited version and return to the author’s original, unedited manuscript at any time and that by the author’s doing so, the editor has no copyright interest. At no point have I ever maintained that the editor should be viewed as a copyright holder except during that narrow period of time between the submission to the author of the edited version and the author’s payment of the editor’s invoice.
As for the employment issue you raise, in the case of an individual author retaining the services of a freelance editor to edit their manuscript, I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for either the IRS or the editor to claim and prove that the editor is an employee of the author as opposed to an independent contractor. I think as between the two issues, the copyright interest is the more worrisome for authors, but is readily resolved by simply paying the editor as agreed.
Hi, thanks for chiming in. I agree that any copyright interest would be entirely dependent on the editor’s work being integrated into the final product for sale. If it’s not used, then, clearly there’s no issue. I do tend to think deep, substantive editing that generates significant changes to the plot, structure, tone, characters, etc, would generate such an intetest. I’m not sure simple copy editing would but it might. Once that interest exists, though, it wouldn’t just go away upon payment, I don’t believe, unless the language of the agreement said as much. Even then, it wouldn’t go away so much as be transferred to the contracting party, in effect, permanently. If there’s no language to that effect in the contract, then, as I read the law, that interest would remain with the creator, in this case, that would be the editor for the substantive changes produced in doing the contracted job.
I agree completely that there’s almost no way an editor in a freelance arrangement like this could be considered an employee. You’d have to come to my house, do the work on my computer during hours I dictate or something like that, totally unrealistic in the vast majority of cases. But I believe that just underlines the issue. An “employee” designation comes with an implied ownership of any copyright interests generated by that employee. If that’s out of the question in the nature of the relationship, then any copyright interest generated is required to be transferred in writing or it doesn’t transfer. The implication in independent contractor relationships is that any copyright interest stays with the contractor except what’s clearly dictated in a written agreement.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s a bad thing if editors do have an interest of this type. In fact, I think they should, particularly if we’re talking about an edit that restructures the story, generates additional scenes, characters, plot elements, what have you, to the final product for sale. There’s a reason the film industry uses work-for-hire agreements with near everyone involved in film production, and a reason the recording industry snuck an exemption into copyright law a while back deeming some sound recordings automatically a work-for-hire.
Yes, I’m advocating writers protect themselves in their contracts, but that’s because I believe there’s more than a passing chance this interest exists, and if it does, something can be done with it. Maybe not so much in present conditions, but who knows what this process is going to look like five or ten years from now? It could lead to different types of relationships, and compensation terms, for these relationships. Or it could lead toward something I can’t even conceive of right now. Everything’s changing and I think that requires a re-evaluation of all the relationships in the publishing process.
I apologize if I misconstrued your point. My intent was to show that the notion editors may have a copyright interest of any sort isn’t just a speculative thing on my part, that it’s actually being discussed and advocated for in some circles, even if it’s just in a limited way. Thank you for clarifying your position.
My point is that the nature of the industry itself as it existed, with everyone involved in the production of a work essentially contracted through a third party (a publisher) may have suppressed rights and interests many of us were unaware of. Now that things are opening up and relationships are morphing into more one on one and less all under a third party umbrella, we may well see some things emerge that have been kept in the shadows by the industry structure itself. An editor’s potential copyright interest, I believe, is one of those things.