By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
Last month, the 12th edition of Clark’s Publishing Agreements was published in the UK, with it rolling out in other markets in the coming months. This long-time legal resource for the publishing industry has been touted by in-house legal departments, literary agents, publishers, and general IP practitioners.
For the Twelfth Edition, all the precedents, explanatory notes and appendices have been thoroughly revised to take account of the latest developments, and includes a new Appendix on AI.
Publishing Perspectives sat down with General Editor and rights consultant Lynette Owen to talk about what readers can expect from the new edition.
Publishing Perspectives: For readers who may not be familiar with Clark’s Publishing Agreements: A Book of Precedents, can you tell us how you first came to publish the book and what you hope publishing professionals take away from it?
Lynette Owen: Clark has a very long history! The author of the first edition was Charles Clark, a barrister and publisher who worked at Hutchinson and Penguin, and was latterly legal counsel to the UK Publishers Association.
The first edition was published as Publishing Agreements in 1980 by Allen & Unwin and was a 176-page demi-octavo jacketed hardback, with some input from publishing professionals. The book has been a fully contributed volume since the second edition and has been updated roughly every 4 years, moving from Allen & Unwin to Butterworth, then Tottel and lastly to Bloomsbury Professional after they acquired Tottel.
We have been lucky to work with the same editorial and production team for many editions. I myself have been a contributor since the second edition, became a coeditor from the fifth edition and sole General Editor from the sixth edition onwards.
After Charles died in 2006, the title was changed to Clark’s Publishing Agreements: A Book of Precedents, although in practice it has always been referred to as “Clark”. All the contributors (publishing professional and lawyers) undertake work on the book in addition to their normal work, and all royalties are donated to the Book Trade Charity here in the UK.
I have been fortunate to be able to retain most of the team of contributors from edition to edition, although inevitably one or two may drop out if they change roles or retire, and I then have to find alternatives. Charles was clear that the book should aim to balance the interests of authors and publishers, and we always aim to keep that in mind.
The book has grown enormously in size over the years, and the current twelfth edition tops 1000 pages. The layout remains the same – after an initial Legal Introduction, there are now 25 contractual precedents with text shown on the right-hand pages, with explanatory notes on the corresponding left-hand pages.
Precedents include a range of author-publisher contracts, licensing contracts, electronic contracts and an influencer contract. The precedents are followed by 15 appendices, some of which cover areas where it would be difficult to provide a typical precedent (e.g. for the US market, for audiobooks and for academic e-book aggregators) as well as topics such as permissions, collective licensing, accessibility, moral rights etc. There are also charts of territories of the world, countries belonging to international copyright conventions and a list of useful addresses. In particular, the new edition contains a new Appendix A on various aspects of AI, an issue which had not yet surfaced when the eleventh edition was published in January 2022.
The overall aim of the book is to give users access to a range of precedents which can be customized for their own purposes, as well as information on key areas of relevance. Key users of the book are small and medium-sized publishers who do not have in-house legal counsel – some of them refer to the book as “my Bible!” It is also used by some literary agents and as a background resource for publishing degree courses.
This is the 12th edition of Clark’s Publishing Agreements, what can readers expect in this update?
Each time we plan for a new edition we aim to take into account new developments which affect the industry. Without doubt the key new element for the twelfth edition is the rise of AI since 2022.
Legal issues are covered in the Legal Introduction; the new Appendix A aims to cover contractual implications, highlighting differences in approach between trade and academic publishers.
Many of the precedents now include suggested wording regarding AI, e.g. restrictions on the author using AI (or being required to declare any such use); restrictions on the use of AI for translation, audio narration etc. We stress that this is a fast-developing area and the subject of much legal action. The appendices on the US market, audio, aggregators, access for the print-impaired and collective licensing have all been updated to take into account recent developments.
You update the book every few years, do you already have topics that aren’t included in this edition that you hope to address in the next edition?
Goodness – the next edition!! Technically that would be scheduled for publication in 2030 and I am sure there will be many more developments in relation to AI before then, and perhaps other developments equally difficult to predict. We aim to keep track of any significant developments in the intervening years, but at the moment I think that both I and the team of contributors are just catching our breath following publication of the twelfth edition in April and awaiting review coverage from a range of journals and online bulletins.