When it comes to movie rights and merchandising, it is standard for the publisher--even legit publishers--to do a 50/50 deal with the writers unless the writer strikes those clauses--and we should!
If a property is optioned--which only means the company or person offering the option has "dibs" on it--writer and publisher split the money. The entity offering the option then either tries to take it to the next step toward production or nothing happens at all.
In my case the option money was a "token" 100.00 and I got fifty bucks out of it. The option expired in a year and a couple years later a new company optioned it. Again, I got 50 bucks. I could have used 100.00. Heck, I still can!
I called my agent--I had one by then, and was told "it's a done deal." I'd signed that contract and like it or not, the publisher gets half of everything unless they release those rights.
The next time one of my properties was optioned for a dollar--and it was by a real working producer--but after a year, nothing.
Options mean nothing; it's like putting something on layaway, only most of the time the customer never picks up the stuff.
Had I been more on the ball, I could have struck out those clauses in the book contract. It's perfectly okay to do so as a result of the negotiating process. You're allowed to have your movie and T-shirt rights!
Years later, my next agent got those rights back for me as a result of negotiations on a new contract, but the rest of it is still the same as the deal I signed in 1988. (Which has NOTHING about e-books, BTW!)
Recently I was offered a contract for something new, instantly noticed the TV/merchandising clauses, and asked my agent to strike those out, along with sales to foreign markets. She can sell those later and we keep all the money.
With this house it was a 30/70 split with me getting the 70%, but still not good enough.
I add for the benefit of PA writers that the chance of ANY PA book ever being optioned, much less made into a film are close to ZERO.
Chances are slightly better for books that are in the stores where people can see and buy them. Hollywood looks at your sales numbers not how wonderful your story is.
Please, look at the "movie deals" on PA's "up in lights" page and check the dates. Some are several YEARS old and none are on the IMDB page. You'd think films scheduled for production in 2006 & 2007 would be finished by now. You'd think PA would update the page to show new stuff.
Good grief, they still have a bit up on a 2004 book written by the son of a famous comedian.
In one squib, PA declares that "Hollywood is calling" when a clearance assistant happened to phone them up about their kid books.
A clearance assistant???? Oh, please.
It's not that impressive. Rather than go into a bookstore, the assistant probably did a google search for publishers and sent a form e-mail with a phone number.
PA said they "selected 51 different children's books to send," to the company. What do you want to bet that they got those writers to PAY for their own books--of maybe they just sent a list of titles to the assistant, expecting her to buy all of them + S&H.
PA played up big that the clearance assistant was at work on A-list picture. They left out that she is not listed on the film credits--I looked it up--and likely works in the office, never once visiting the set. Many movie industry people never get close to the camera, but shuffle papers around.
Get over yourself PA. A-list movies are based on bestsellers and you've diligently avoided THAT for the last 10 years.
It is frustating seeing post on their website "Happy I'm ...." and know that it is a matter of time that they will be "Unhappy......" and banned. So you can't tell the "happy i'm " the real truth before they buy x amount of books from the scam that is PA.