JAC Publishing & Promotions

TALPS!!!!!!!!!!!

Uh... Gonna PM you.

If the compilation did well as a performed theater piece, the producer should look into submitting it to Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service, since right now they are the only places most theater companies would ever look for newly published plays.

JAC Publishing is a publisher of newsletters/directories/playbill inserts; I have seen things they've done. If they want to expand into publishing plays, they would do well to get a good intellectual property lawyer to write them a better contract.

It's hard to see what the advantage of publishing with them would be at this juncture. I certainly wouldn't sign that contract, and they don't seem to have a marketing plan for their play and monologue publications in place.

However, publishing monologues is an interesting idea; in the parts of the US where "forensics" (i.e., public speaking) competitions are still a big deal for high-schoolers, there is a never-ending market for new monologues, and the existing supply doesn't meet the demand. My dad, who is a pretty obscure playwright, has had kids write to him from all over the US for permission to perform some of his unpublished monologues, which apparently have been circulating among high-school drama teachers as photocopies for years.

JAC Publishing and Promotions

Hello,

I have a play in their submission pile (hopefully recieve word soon, since they say 1-2 months, and it's been about 1), and was wondering about them. I know they've only published a play for a few years, and was wondering if I should go with them if I am accepted. Does anyone have any expierence with them?

link: www.jacpub.com

Here's their contract link : http://www.jacpub.com//Sample_Agreement.pdf

I'm not sure about their contract (^) as well. Anything I should watch out for?

thanks,
comped

Sorry to bump this, But I noticed this on P&E about JAC:

JAC Publishing & Promotions: Poor contract. Not recommended. Geared toward playwrights.

Click to expand...

What do they mean by "poor contract"? Could any of you contract-lawyer types tell me what's wrong with it?

comped

PS: link to contract (or "sample agreement" as they call it on their website): http://www.jacpub.com//Sample_Agreement.pdf

PPS: I just got a email from them, and now they've upped their response time to SIX months, from the ONE or TWO that it states in their guidelines. Does this smell funky to any of you?

Is that liquidated damages clause standard in this type of contract? I wouldn't sign a book contract with that clause.

just slipped upon this. I would (as a published playwright, through not with a big house. There are a couple of Big House published playwrights around here who would probably know better then me/have more experience.) stay far far away from them. Going off the sample provided early in this thread, I've looked things over <here> (the pdf link comped submitted didn't open, however from the JACPub website, I was linked back to that above link by clicking on "Get Published!"...okay I did find the PDF sample contract).

Stay far far away.

Let me say this again, in big bold letters...STAY THE HELL AWAY![/U][/I]

sigh...okay that is out of my system.

First red flag: you have to pay anywhere from $75-300 for them to publish your play? and you only get 25-50% back per sale? And then you have to continue to pay them $120/year for as long as your agreement is in place?

I did a sample test on a one-act play published through JAC. The gentleman paid $150 for one of his plays to be published (plus the $120 yearly fee--$270 upfront). JAC offers a $40 package for this play (8 scripts, according to their PDF catalog [which hasn't been updated in over a year] one acting script per actor plus two scripts for technical [director/stage manager/etc]). The author, under their agreement gets 25%, he would therefore get $10 (he loses about $0.56 on this deal). He would also get 50% of the royalty fee, which is $35/performance. As a director I always assume I'm going to do at least 3 performances over a weekend. $35*3=$105*50%=$52.50 to the author. Total $62.50 to the author. The author would have to sell 4 performances plus some additional scripts or performance rights just to break even his first year. That is for a one act play, I didn't break down a full act, but I can't imagine it being much better.

In addition, if you decide you don't like what they've done/how they treated you/etc, you can terminate your contract with 30 days notice, but JAC bills you for the time and effort they put into preparing your play. This doesn't come out the initial fee you paid them for this work in the first place.

Now again I'm not a playwright published by Samuel French or MTI or anything, my publisher is a small epublishing house. They aren't perfect, there are a few things I wish they did better (I'd like to see a system in place where I can track the plays sold online and I'd like a quarterly or semi annual pay structure as opposed to a yearly, but these are minor minor complaints). I never paid them a dime to read my play, format my play, edit my play or publish my play. They worked with me extensively, consulting with me on changes and giving me final script approval.

approximently 90% of the play can be read on their website for free as a perusal copy. Rights run run $60/first performance and unlimited amount of scripts (they get a single pdf digital download that they can print off and copy as many times as they want/need). my split is 20% for the script (about $4) and 60% of the royalty fee (about $24/performance). Using the 3 show model I presented above, the theater performing would save about $5 and I would have made about $75 (this doesn't include my expenses that I never calculated such as a website presence, etc). Not bad for a script that runs about 38 pages.

The publisher pays the author, the author never pays the publisher. That holds true for playwrights just as much as it does for novelists. HOWEVER that said, the goal of a playwright shouldn't be to be published. The market is huge, the goal of any playwright should be to be produced. You notice so many things in a production that you would never notice just writing and that bothers me. Have I put plays out there that have never been produced? I sure have, 10-minute plays through my Smashwords account. I sell them for $0.99 and because of all the returns (separating actors from dialog and action, necessary in a play) I'm not included in their "premium" catalog. I've not made a dime from these yet, nor do I promote them all that much. They are there really as an experiment to see if there is a market, via word of mouth, for new duets and monologues for HS forensics programs (big here in Kansas). I feel bad about about $0.99 but I have to sell them for something or KHSAA doesn't recognize them as published works via their rules. I thought running it through Smashwords would be easier then setting up a store on my website. But again, the goal of a playwright should be to see their work produced, not published.

Questions about this publisher came up on a Facebook group for playwrights I'm on and I revisited their page. It looks like they no longer the $120/year fee but the fee structure remains the same ($75-300 depending on the size of your script).