This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Independent Comic Book Publishing. It attempts to address the issue of creating contracts for your business without being self-serving. While this can’t be taken as legal advice, as contract attorney and a comic book lawyer, I need to offer three particular warnings against taking the law into your own hands when it comes to your contracts.

• First, unless you’re a lawyer with experience in contracts, you probably don’t know the laws governing legal agreements. While contracts are often supposed to make a deal clear, the underlying legal principles can be confusing.  Without training and experience in contract law, your attempts to write your own contract can hurt you more than it can help.

• Second, you might not understand the meaning or the implications of the words in the contract. The language used in contracts is often circular, opaque and dense with words that no one uses anywhere else but in contracts. To complicate the issue, what normal words mean in a specific contract and what you think they mean are often two different things.  Without someone there to explain things to you, it is easy to sign something that will hurt you down the line.

This is not an attack on your intelligence. This is a question of training and experience. I’m a writer as well as an attorney, but I don't edit my books or design the covers. I hire professionals to do that. When I get on an airplane, I don't fly my own plane. I pay the airline to supply professionals. I could learn editing, cover design and piloting, but it saves time and money to bring in a professional.

If you don’t hire a lawyer and write the contract yourself, you might save a few hundred dollars up front, but if you miss something and you lose the rights to your property, you could be looking at a multi-million dollar loss down the road.

If you hire a lawyer before a deal is signed, it will cost you some of your investment. If you hire one after something goes wrong and you need to go to court, that price can rise exponentially. Court cases can take years and those billable hours pile up fast. For the long term success of your publishing, it is better to hire a professional early and avoid issues before they happen.

Finally, if you try to create your own contract, you might not know what kind of contract you need. Different contracts exist for different deals and scenarios of comic book publishing. If you use the wrong contract for your deals, you can place yourself in a poor position. For example:

• If you’re working with other creators on a book, you’ll need an artist collaboration agreement for each creator who will own a piece of the underlying intellectual property.

• If you’re hiring other freelance artists to work on your project, or if you’re working without credit on someone else’s material, you need a work-for-hire agreement.

• If you hire an accountant, lawyer, or editor, you’ll need a professional services contract with each one of them.

• If you use someone else’s intellectual property you’ll need a license agreement.

Comic creators can find almost anything for free on the internet, including contracts. But if you use the wrong contracts for your comic, the small amount you save now could cost you a lot more down the road.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you have questions about the business or legal aspects of your comic book publishing and you'd like a free consultation, please contact me and we can set something up that fits in with your schedule.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS BLOG POST IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL ADVICE. IF YOU HAVE AN ISSUE WITH YOUR COMIC PROPERTY, DISCUSS IT WITH A QUALIFIED CONTRACT ATTORNEY OR CONTACT C3 FOR A FREE CONSULTATION