Work-for-hire contract terms
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For additional income, I'm potentially signing up with a company that helps self-published authors develop their books which includes illustration services. They want to add me to their roster and they sent over a contract. Is it normal to sign over all copyrights to the company, or is this negotiable? If it were a trade publisher I'd push harder for more rights, but as I'm considering this work solely for financial purposes and the work is not going in my portfolio, is it a big deal with sign away all my rights?
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@Laurel-Aylesworth-0 I I know more experienced people will chime in and help but what I could say Is that, if you are doing character design then copyright is something to consider. One thing is just to do kids illustrations and nature. But if you have to create characters I think that at least you should be able to use them in your portfolio as character design experience.
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@Laurel-Aylesworth-0
Almost every self publisher I worked for wants all rights. I found that I try to balance getting more money with letting it go. I have seen my characters being used in other “ projects” of theirs( spin offs like coloring books, workbooks etcetera) and it does sting a bit, especially if it’s not done well. Unfortunately as freelancers, sometimes we have to choose to pay the bills over releasing a potential job:( I always make sure in the contract that I can show my art created for a job in my portfolio. -
@Laurel-Aylesworth-0 Those types of publishing services or vanity presses want to offer authors an all-in-one service with a one-time fee, and make it as simple as possible, which is why they do a work for hire thing. While it's not standard in the traditional publishing industry and not advantageous for the illustrator, I'm pretty sure this company will consider it a deal breaker if you don't want to sign away your rights. So you have to decide if this is something you're comfortable with or not.
