There has been a dramatic change to French Intellectual Property Code in regards to publishing contracts being offered to authors. Any new contract that publishers give to an author will now include a provision for digital distribution in e-Book form.
The amended French Intellectual Property law clearly states that a publishing contract not only covers the “manufacture of copies” but also the “realization in a digital form”.
How does this new change effect French authors? Well, when they get a contract from a publisher to distribute their book to bookstores all over France there has to be a new provision about e-Books. The contract will now be divided into two different segments – traditional and digital. This will hopefully put authors at ease, because in the contract it will be established what the digital royalty rates are and how much they stand to earn when someone buys the e-book.
The publishing contracts entered into before 1st December 2014 will comply with this new obligation of separate parts, only if these contracts are amended for a specific reason.
I think its great that publishing contracts have separation between digital and physical distribution. Before, everything was just lumped into the one category and hopefully now authors will see a better royalty rate for their digital book sales.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.