publishing contract process

Welcome to the autumn 2014 series on contract negotiation! In the weeks to come, Wednesday posts will take a look at the process of negotiating a publishing contract, as well as which terms are negotiable (and which are not). Today, we’ll examine an overview of the contracts and negotiation process. Step 1: The Offer. Publishing contracts always start with an offer. In some cases, the “offer” is the contract, but more commonly, the offer begins with an editor sending a short term sheet to the author or author’s agent. A “term sheet” won’t contain all the terms that will show up in the contract. Instead,