Editing

Morals Clauses

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Sep 7, 2018 in Editing, MeToo | 0 comments

Morals clause from an old movie contract. If you lose “the respect of the public” you lose your job.

I had an interesting chat with my agent yesterday. We’re awaiting a new contract from Little, Brown, and she said that it should be fairly straightforward unless they include a morals clause.

I was confused. It is 1940? But (as happens fairly frequently) I am behind the times.

It turns out that a lot of publishers have responded to the #MeToo movement by inserting morals clauses in contracts. These basically say that if (between the time that the contract is signed and the book is published) the author behaves in a way that is inconsistent with his/her previous behavior, the publisher has the right to cancel the book. And (here’s the kicker) pay back the advance.

It’s clear where this is coming from. In recent cases (like this and this) publishers have cancelled books or dropped contracts when an author’s harassment of women or engagement in hate speech has come to light. And a publisher has to eat costs when that happens. I get that.

But…the way these clauses are written is alarming. The language is so broad that it basically says that a publisher can cancel a project and demand repayment of the advance if an author does anything the publisher does not like.

I can think of lots of behavior that publisher might not like–or that they might have disliked not so long ago. Voting for the wrong candidate, say. Dating or marrying someone of the wrong race or gender. Getting arrested at a protest. Joining a union. Becoming a member of the Communist Party. Contracting HIV. Remember when getting married was grounds for firing a teacher?

In the standard publishing contract, the publisher already has broad power to cancel a project for any reason, up to and including that they just don’t like the manuscript very much. They don’t need a morals clause for that. But normally, unless an author has done an astonishingly poor job, the advance is not repaid. That’s what publishers are trying to change.

I’m not a fan.

I’m not a fan of my publisher deciding when my behavior is or isn’t acceptable. (It’s their job to decide this about my manuscripts, not my actions.) I’m not a fan of writing clauses so broad and sweeping that they apply to a wide range of behavior and speech when the publisher (for now) is only trying to combat a narrow one.

Mostly, I’m not a fan because what these clauses do is take power out of the hands of authors and hand it to publishers. Considering that the children’s book field is made up mostly of women, this is especially ironic. Taking power away from individual women and putting it in the hands of large corporations (mostly controlled at their highest levels by men) is really, really not what the #MeToo movement is about.

So what’s the answer, if it isn’t a morals clause? I’m not really sure. Except to remind publishers that humans beings are messy, unpredictable, and sometimes dreadful. And so any enterprise that involves making contracts with human beings is going to involve some risk that they will behave in ways you don’t like.

Perhaps that’s just a risk that publishers have to live with.

From Ursula

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Mar 13, 2017 in Childhood, Children's Literature, Editing | 0 comments

Ursula Nordstrom edited and published some of the greatest writers and illustrators for children: Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Ruth Krauss, Garth Williams, Margaret Wise Brown, and many more. I like to look through her collected letters for joy and inspiration when the creative slog feels longer than usual.

In 1953 she wrote to Meindert Dejong:

“Did I ever tell you that, several years ago, after the Harper management saw that I could publish children’s books successfully, I was taken out to luncheon and offered, with great ceremony, the opportunity to be an editor in the adult department? The implication of course, was that since I had learned to publish books for children with considerable success perhaps I was now ready to move along (or up) to the adult field. I almost pushed the luncheon table into the lap of the pompous gentleman across from me and then explained kindly that publishing children’s books was what I did, that I couldn’t possible be interested in books for dead full finished adults, and thank you very much but I had to get back to my desk to publish some more good books for bad children.”

Books that Break the Rules

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Dec 17, 2014 in Children's Literature, Editing | 0 comments

I was an editor before I was a writer (still am, in fact), and I can tell you there are certain things you look for in a manuscript when you first pick it up, a sort of mental checklist before you can even begin deciding whether or not it’s a fit for your list and something your company could publish successfully. Will it fit in a recognized format? Does it have a protagonist of the right age? Does the main character grow and change as the book progresses? Does it preach an irritating and stuffy moral? Stuff like that.

It is surprising, then, when I’m reading the classics to my daughter, to find how many of them violate these rules. Like these:

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: Can’t be beat for sheer transgressive fun and sly humor and a dead-on perception of the trials of childhood (like being FORCED to be Joseph in the Christmas pageant just because your father is the minister). Violates the rules by having a protagonist who is barely developed, doesn’t even get a name (!), and essentially exists as a set of eyes through which to see the action.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The ultimate wish-fulfillment book, as tasty to read as a chocolate bar is to eat. Violates the rules by having a passive protagonist who does nothing to earn his good fortune—who, in fact, earns his good fortune BY doing nothing.

Stuart Little: There’s something just so oddly satisfying about this book, although I have trouble putting my finger on it. Is it the sharp perception of the experience of being tiny in a giant world, perhaps? Violates the rules by not wrapping up plot threads once they have been started. (Did Stuart ever find Margalo? Did he ever see Miss Ames again?) And the car that goes invisible, too. That part’s just silly, E.B.

And yet, they’re marvelous books. I enjoying reading them as much as my girl loves hearing them. So is the moral that geniuses (genii?) can break the rules, or that the rules are silly?