Hi. If a magazine series is published into a book, should the publishing house first arrange a contract with the author, or only with the magazine that first paid and published the series, even if the author had no contract for the series? And is the author owed a royalty on book sales? Thanks!
Thank you, Lorraine, this is really helpful and I will certainly look into the ALCS. Yes, I was paid by the magazine for each article as it came out on a month by month basis, but not by the publisher who later worked with the magazine to make the series into a book. I assumed that as I had been paid by he magazine, they had full rights to do as they wish with the work, which I guess confers with what you mention above i.e that an accepted payment is in effect a contract. Thanks again for responding.
If you write a series or part of a series that's published in a magazine, it depends on the contract you signed in the first place whether you have given them the right to reproduce that work in any other form. Your rights to be identified as the author remain in perpetuity unless you give them up.
By 'no contract for the series' what do you mean? When you sold the work to the publisher of the magazine, you agreed and accepted a price for that work to be used - that is a contract.
Have you signed up to ALCS? (Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society): www.alcs.co.uk
There you can log details of all your work wherever it is printed in paper form (not digital), and that would include the book form of your work; you should then receive a small payment for each copy sold. As a member (it's free) you could ask them this sort of question.