The Smoking Gun reported recently that The Penguin Group, a well-known publishing company, filed suit with the New York Supreme 
Court over breach of contract with several of their writers. The suit seeks to recoup advances paid to the named authors for failure to deliver the agreed manuscripts.
The report is rather vague so we don’t know the specifics of each case. Suffice to say, going to court over breach of contract is no fun, and in the end, nobody really wins. I speak from experience having owned and operated a business that required the use of complex contracts to deliver goods and services.
A contract is a legally binding instrument that spells out the responsibilities and duties of the parties involved, in the conduct of some transaction. More simply put, contracts protect each of the parties to the agreement from screwing each other. Even more simply put; contracts protect the contractor.
Now it would be a wonderful thing if we could all trust each other to keep our word without resorting to lawyers. Alas, this is not the world we live in; thus the need for contracts. In the case of a publishing advance, in exchange for a specified sum of money, the author agrees to provide a manuscript about the agreed upon subject, within the agreed time-frame, and with a reasonable degree of workmanship.
Obviously, if I accept your money to write a book about gardening let’s say, then you should reasonably expect that I won’t deliver you a manuscript about animal husbandry. Nor should you expect me to give you a hundred thousand words on my summer vacation. Furthermore, you have reason to expect that I will deliver my gardening book to you by the deadline prescribed and not fifteen months later, unless of course we agree to an extension.
On the other hand, if I produce the agreed manuscript, on time, and in a professionally competent manner, then you, Mr. Publisher, are obligated by our contract to move ahead with the book. You may not suddenly decide that you have too many gardening books in your catalog right now, and make up some bogus reason to reject the manuscript. Unfortunately, this does happen. The difference being that unless your name is Stephen King or Tom Clancy, the author usually doesn’t have the resources to deal with their publishers lawyers.
So what is the moral of the story? As with publishing, as in life, do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it. You may still be thrown under the bus when all is said and done, but at least you can sleep at night. The mini-moral is to read the contract. The devil really is in the details as they say.
