Contractual niceties

...So I've been working hard to finish the weddings book early, as I've got several new projects coming up soon - Nano being not the least of them. The deadline for delivery of the ms is the end of November, but it's all now pretty much ready to send off to the publisher.

And then I got a letter from the publisher yesterday in which he informed me - first I knew of it - that he's sold the publishing company to somebody else as of now.

Luckily, the new owner still wants the wedding book - in fact, he wants to make it bigger and better. Which means, on the plus side, it will have a higher cover price so I should get higher royalties. On the down side, the publication date had been put back from February to April - so there are two months fewer potential sales.

I have not been paid any advance at all and royalties are only paid twelve months after the book is published - so that's a long while before I see any return.

I signed a contract when they agreed that I should write the book, which specified delivery date of the ms and asserted their right to charge me financial penalities if for any reason it was delivered late. And yet it seems they can alter their side of the contract with impunity. I wonder what my legal position would have been if the new owner had decided he didn't want to publish the weddings book. Would I have done a year's unpaid work for no return at all? Could I have claimed compensation? It yet remains to be seen whether this 'bigger better' version of the book will require me to write any more text for it - this again would alter my contract, which specifies my ms should be of a certain length. Could I claim a payment for any extra work they want me to do?

I'm fairly confident that these worst case scenarios won't occur - but it has alerted me to some potential pitfalls of publishing which I have not encountered before.

Nano Shmamo

...and if you're inspired by those Booker prizewinners to finally write that novel, November is the time to start.

Once again it will be NANOWRIMO or, for the uninitiated, National (well, international really) Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write at least 50,000 words of a novel between 1st and 30th November 2006.

October is preparation month. You can plan your plot and your characters and whatever else you need or want to do in advance - or you can make no preparations at all, it's up to you - but the rules say you can't start actually writing until 1st Nov. Then you go hell for leather to get it down while being egged on and egging others on to do the same via the online forums and at face to face meetings and write-ins in your own area.

It's a liberating process - no time to think about what you're writing - just go with the flow and see where your creativity takes you. Time enough to edit and correct in the other 11 months of the year (just what I'm trying to do now with my last year's attempt.)

Last year was my first nano - I went into it with no idea what I was going to write, and the first couple of weeks I produced nowhere near the target figure. But as the month went on the bug bit, a plot began to emerge from my ramblings and my natural competitiveness induced me to actually complete the 50k.

This year I'm better organised - I actually have a plot and some brief notes to guide me. Can't wait to get started.

Oh, one final and very important point: nobody but you has to see what you've written (although you can share it if you want to). And it really doesn't matter if you don't make the 50K - whatever number of words you manage, those are words that you might never have written otherwise. It gets you writing, it gets you creating, you've nothing to lose - and you might even end up with a publishable novel.

So what are you waiting for? You can sign up now at www.nanowrimo.org
Good luck - and leave a comment here if you sign up, with your usename - then we can all sign up as writing buddies. My usename is Nicki Picki - feel free to add me to your profile page.

See you there?

Something to aim for...

Looking for a good book to read? One that will inspire you to write your own? This is the shortlist of novels in the running for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, one of the biggest book prizes in the world:

Desai, Kiran: The Inheritance of Loss - Hamish Hamilton
Grenville, Kate: The Secret River - Canongate
Hyland, M.J.: Carry Me Down - Canongate
Matar, Hisham: In the Country of Men - Viking
St Aubyn, Edward: Mother’s Milk - Picador
Waters, Sarah: The Night Watch – Virago

This year’s prizewinner was announced yesterday. The prize went to Kiran Desai for her novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss’. Two interesting facts about the author: 1) She is the daughter of Anita Desai who has herself been shortlisted for the prize on three previous occasions. 2) She is currently a student in the University of Columbia’s creative writing course.

Want to know how to write your own prizewinner? This is Hermione Lee, Chair of the Judges this year:"Each of these novels has what we as judges were most looking for, a distinctive original voice, an audacious imagination that takes readers to undiscovered countries of the mind, a strong power of story-telling and a historical truthfulness. Each of these novels creates a world you inhabit without question or distrust while you are reading, and a mood, an atmosphere, which lasts long after the reading is over."

The winner receives £50,000 with a guaranteed increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their own book.

The six shortlisted books for 2006 were chosen from a longlist of 19, details of which can be found at www.themanbookerprize.com Maybe this should be your reading list for the next few months?