At my first #Nebulas2020 panel of the day on contracts for authors. @kmkirtland gives the great advice to look at a contract as if it will be enforced by your worst enemy against you, rather than by your best friend in your favor.

The main things negotiable, says @sethasfishman are territory (location), advance, royalties. @kmkingtweet notes that she thinks of it as poker - you have all the chips and you give up some of them for what a publisher can do.

But all panelists agree - it is almost never a good idea to give up film rights, tv rights.

@Keffy says he looks at is a a huge chip to be split in almost infinite ways. And he will not give up rights unless the publisher has a plan to use them. Also, as a short publisher and writer he says if a publisher is asking for film rights, run away and notify writer beware.

Now we are talking about reversion clauses - there are several flavors - time period in which a publisher has to publish and how long they have the right to print if it goes out of print (250 copies in a year is typically) then a period when you can ask for rights back.

@Keffy notes that in short fiction this is exclusivity clauses - in the past w/ magazines a short was out of print after a month. Now it is typically a year and then an author can sell reprints (incl. audio). Also ask to waive for best of year or single author collections.

@kmkirtland says good boilerplate is a map of past records - shows what you have been able to hammer out with a publisher. Territory, languages, who has approval over what, what publicity you will do as author, when you get paid, how long does the publisher have to publish work.

For milestones, @kmkirtland reccs "no later than" as in "on publication or no later than 12 months from submission."