Must Writers Be Moral? Their Contracts May Require It (New York Times)
More and more large publishing houses are putting âmorality clausesâ in contracts for authors. The idea is if the author is involved in a scandal (as determined by the publisher), the publisher can fire them.
One answer is the increasingly widespread âmorality clause.â Over the past few years, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Penguin Random House have added such clauses to their standard book contracts. Iâve heard that Hachette Book Group is debating putting one in its trade book contracts, though the publisher wouldnât confirm it. These clauses release a company from the obligation to publish a book if, in the words of Penguin Random House, âpast or future conduct of the author inconsistent with the authorâs reputation at the time this agreement is executed comes to light and results in sustained, widespread public condemnation of the author that materially diminishes the sales potential of the work.â
Thatâs reasonable, I guess. Penguin, to its credit, doesnât ask authors to return their advances. But other publishers do, and some are even more hard-nosed.
This past year, regular contributors to CondĂ© Nast magazines started spotting a new paragraph in their yearly contracts. Itâs a doozy. If, in the companyâs âsole judgment,â the clause states, the writer âbecomes the subject of public disrepute, contempt, complaints or scandals,â CondĂ© Nast can terminate the agreement. In other words, a writer need not have done anything wrong; she need only become scandalous. In the age of the Twitter mob, that could mean simply writing or saying something that offends some group of strident tweeters.
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