Are Contracts Enough? An Empirical Study of Author Rights in Australian Publishing Agreements
[Joshua Yuvaraj and Rebecca Giblin] Abstract: A majority of the world’s nations grant authors statutory reversion rights: entitlements to reclaim their copyrights in certain circumstances, such as their works becoming unavailable for purchase. In Australia (as in the UK) we have no such universal protections, leaving creator rights to be governed entirely by their contracts with investors. But is this enough? We investigate that question in the book industry context via an exploratory study of publishing contracts sourced from the archive of the Australian Society of Authors.
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