I've now seen the contract--and it's a poor contract, and not just because of the blanks.
There's a 3-month exclusivity period that starts on publication, but the publisher also has the right not to publish, and if that happens there is no provision at all in the contract for the grant of rights to terminate. Also, after the 3-month exclusivity period, the publisher retains non-exclusive rights "in perpetuity," which means they could produce any number of reprints or anthologies with an author's story in them and never pay another penny. They can also assign those rights to any third party they please. So while writers are getting paid by this publisher, and do retain copyright and the right to re-publish their stories, they are also losing control of their work, given the wide-ranging publication and assignment rights this publisher retains.
I also find it bizarre, and not at all professional, that they would publish Robert's story without a signed contract in hand. That's just foolish. Contracts also protect a publisher.
Obviously what I've outlined above is a worst case scenario, and what is much more likely to happen is that the publisher will display a story, maybe put it in an anthology somewhere down the road, and that's it. But in evaluating publishing contracts, you always need to consider the worst-case scenario that's presented by the literal contract language, and ask yourself if you're comfortable with that, even if it's a remote possibility.
This is the second sizeable media company I've heard about in the past couple of years that's unprofessional in its contract dealings (the other is Jerrick Media, publishers of Omni).
- Victoria
