Week 10 – in which I deal with contract lawyers, insurers, and doing paid-stuff for other people
It’s been an intense few months, personally and professionally. I won’t bore you with the personal stuff (though it did involve a humorous episode where I fell off a picnic bench and badly injured my back, and had to have the whole living-room ceiling replaced after part of it collapsed from a boiler leak and they discovered asbestos). But no! Put your tiny violins away! I’m not telling you about all that. Instead, I’m going to tell you about lawyers, insurers, and the surprisingly complex logistics of providing “publishing services”. Lucky you.
Actually, this is all a lot more interesting than it sounds.1 But firstly, you ask, what are these “publishing services” of which you speak? Sounds like a euphemism, like those adverts in newsagents that used to offer “French Polishing”2. Well, it isn’t. Scour your filthy mind of such prurient thoughts! What I’m calling “publishing services” are simply such things as editing, cover design, book formatting, etc. I am myself a professional illustrator, cover designer and book formatter, so I’ve already been doing these things for a living for a good number of years. However, offering these services through WoodPig Press (which is my plan) is a bit more complicated.
But before I get to that, why would I want to offer “publishing services” anyway? “Aren’t you a publisher?” you ask. “Shouldn’t you be publishing other people’s books, not offering dubious ‘services’ which sound like euphemisms?” Good point. But for small presses, who don’t have the deep pockets of the big publishers, the big question is how to fund the main enterprise of publishing other people (paying for cover design, editing, marketing, etc). Big publishers do this with things called “profits”, apparently, but not knowing what those are, I thought I’d investigate other avenues. I’ve mentioned before what the options are, but in brief summary: (1) hybrid publishing (author contributes toward publication costs), (2) grant funding, and (3) provision of partly in-house publishing services for authors and other publishers. Anyway, (1) is a hard sell (difficult to clearly differentiate from vanity publishing), (2) is still a possibility, at some point, but (3) seems like an honest and practical avenue, which gives us the greatest freedom. After all, since I’ll be utilising such services to publish other authors, then it’s not a big step to use them to help others get published elsewhere.
To make it transparent and above board, the one thing I decided early on was to make it a policy that WoodPig Press would not publish titles that had benefited from these services, and nor would we offer those services for titles that had been rejected from the submissions process. The first would open us up to the suspicion that we were surreptitiously getting authors to pay for their own editing and design services, and the second to the accusation that we were using the submissions process to fund the press. This might be overthinking things a bit, and possibly spiting ourselves, but I’d prefer those things to any waft of duplicitous dealing.
OK, so here’s how it works: a client (an author or indie publisher) comes to us for one or more services (cover design, etc). I work with them to decide what they need, help them pick from a range of experienced and high-quality freelancers, then negotiate fees, organise scheduling, take payment, handle feedback, and sign off. Then the client pays me (plus 5% for my admin time), and I pay the freelancers. “But what’s to stop the client going straight to the freelancers?”, you ask. (My, you’re full of questions today!) Well, nothing. My intention in acting as a middle-man is not to force freelancers and clients to conduct their business through the press, and if they go outside of that, there are no penalties. But I thought it might be more convenient for those clients who hire multiple services to have only one person to deal with, who would also manage all the aforementioned fiddly bits. Also, of course, they may require advice as to what services they require, and which freelancers might best suit their needs. I think this is probably worth an additional 5%. “But why not charge the freelancers as well?” I did think of this, but as a freelancer myself, I understand how increasingly hard it is to find work, and there are no shortage of middle-men eager to take a cut (and much higher than 5%). I may revisit this decision somewhere down the line if it turns out that I’ve made a rod for my own back, and it involves spending too much time in this role, but I hope not to. As long as I get some recompense, and that money can be squirrelled away for funding the main publishing enterprise, then I’ll be happy.
And with that, I should probably announce that we are now OPEN for publishing services. So, if you are an indie author or small publisher, looking for cover design, editing, formatting, etc, then please get in touch. You can read more about these services here.
OK, contracts! Wait, where are you going? It is interesting, honestly!3
It would be nice if we lived in a world where business was conducted purely on good will and trust. It would also be nice if chocolate grew on trees.4 Given that we’re also conducting business globally, and with people I don’t know very well, it seemed prudent to have at least some sort of basic agreement in place for both hiring people and getting hired.
With this in mind, I contacted a lawyer specialising in literary contracts, who helped me develop a generic contract that would serve three purposes: (1) to hire freelancers to work for WoodPig Press in helping to publish authors; (2) to hire freelancers through WPP to work for clients on titles NOT published through the press; and (3) for WPP to be hired by clients to work on titles not published by us. Got all that? The contract would also have to be neutral in terms of the things being offered. So, the work commissioned is described as “the material”, where that can be artwork, design, copy-editing, proofreading, etc. This is an awkward way of talking about some of these services, as not all terms apply to all things, but I’ve been reassured by the lawyer (who has a lawyer degree an everyfin) that those clauses that do not apply can simply be ignored. And it was either go this route, or pay for a bespoke contract for all three purposes and for each type of work being offered. Which, you know, I would have been charged extra for (and, Good Lord A’mighty, do they charge!). I mean, in terms of hourly rate, the only thing comparable is a high-class escort!
I should imagine.
Anyway, that’s all pretty much done now. I got feedback from various freelancers, and we tweaked a few things, but I think we’re now all good. I’ll be re-employing said lawyer when it comes to generating an author contract for when we open to submissions next year. True, I could have simply adapted existing contracts for both author and freelancer agreements – I’ve still got some of my own, and others have offered to share theirs with me – but I wanted the reassurance of a properly trained legal mind that I could annoy with paranoid and neurotic questions (which I did).
Insurance always feels a bit like you’re betting against God. Or is that not having insurance? Anyway, I quickly realised that I would need something in place to cover all the sundry activities and how they might piss various people off. So, I ended up having to get three different types: public liability, employer’s liability, and professional indemnity.
Public liability is quite simple: if you give a talk or set up a stall at a book fair, and someone trips over your laptop lead or gets a paper cut from handling your books, you’re covered (and many events organisers now require professional attendees to possess this).
Employer’s liability covers you for when an employee sues you, basically, and is a legal requirement in the UK. I had hoped not to require this, as everyone I employ is not technically an “employee” but a freelancer – they work from home, use their own equipment, pay their own tax, etc. But there is one grey area that it seemed too risky to chance: if you direct someone in their work, then you are their employer. So, if you hire a plumber, you are not directing them in what to do (they come to your house and plumb, and don’t ask you how they should plumb – which, by the way, in terms of hourly rate, is not quite up there with lawyers and escorts, but isn’t bad at all). But if you’ve hired a cover designer/illustrator, and you’re responding to roughs and possible layouts, then you are essentially “directing them in their work”. So, considering that fines for non-possession of employer’s liability insurance come in at an eye-watering £2000 A DAY, and the insurance premium is quite reasonable, then it didn’t seem worth the risk.
One quirk is that you can’t have employer’s liability without public liability, so the very reasonable £10 A YEAR that I was paying to the Society of Authors to include PL in my membership fee was now redundant. Which is sad, as The Great Orange One would say.
Professional indemnity. Ah, what a fucking nightmare this turned out to be! First of all, if you are a freelancer, then this protects you against claims of negligence, accidental copyright infringement, libel, slander, etc, if you’re sued. So, as a writer, illustrator and designer, I need this just for myself. For some added peace of mind, I also needed this to stretch back a few years to cover my self-published works.
However, as a publisher, you also need professional indemnity to cover you against the negligent, libellous, slanderous, defamatory, copyright-infringing acts of your employees and authors! Now, if you have ever signed a contract covering freelance work or book publishing, then you will know that most of them contain a clause that says something like, “If you steal other people’s stuff, or call people names, or whatever, then it’s your arse they’ll sue” (I paraphrase). So, as a publisher, why do I need insurance? Well, it’s because an offended person could come after the publisher, claiming you didn’t do your due diligence, and you might need to defend yourself. I mean, as the publisher, you could then go after the freelancer or author, but seeing as most freelancers and authors I know have very little money (and I base that on first-hand knowledge), then you might be left holding the baby.5 Better safe than insolvent, as my gramps always used to say. All of which means that professional indemnity makes up 80% of the premium. One other reason it’s so high is that, aside from covering the various hats I wear, both the services I offer and the books I write and will publish are available globally, thus increasing potential risk. Gee, thanks, Internet.
Anyway, that’s insurance. And a jolly not-fun ride it has been. The number of times I had to explain the convoluted cover I required (whilst also not really knowing what cover I required), I can’t tell you.6
And that’s it.
Of course, in case you need this pointing out, regarding all of the above, I am not a lawyer, an insurance broker, or anyone whose opinion should be taken seriously about anything, and any advice given here should be taken with a bucketful of salt. So, do please do your own research and come to your own conclusions.
But it does feel like quite a major step forward, in terms of getting the press going. The only remaining things are distribution (which I think I’m almost there with), marketing (oh, God), submissions (oh God, oh God), and being “editor-in-chief (which I’m actually looking forward to – even if it’s only for the name plaque).
As I say, we’re now OPEN for publishing services. So, if interested, then please check out this page, and drop us a line.
Oh, and if you are a freelancer (illustrator, designer, editor, etc), then we’re still looking for talented people to add to the pool. So, please get in touch.