Morals Clauses
Morals clause from an old movie contract. If you lose “the respect of the public” you lose your job.
I had an interesting chat with my agent yesterday. We’re awaiting a new contract from Little, Brown, and she said that it should be fairly straightforward unless they include a morals clause.
I was confused. It is 1940? But (as happens fairly frequently) I am behind the times.
It turns out that a lot of publishers have responded to the #MeToo movement by inserting morals clauses in contracts. These basically say that if (between the time that the contract is signed and the book is published) the author behaves in a way that is inconsistent with his/her previous behavior, the publisher has the right to cancel the book. And (here’s the kicker) pay back the advance.
It’s clear where this is coming from. In recent cases (like this and this) publishers have cancelled books or dropped contracts when an author’s harassment of women or engagement in hate speech has come to light. And a publisher has to eat costs when that happens. I get that.
But…the way these clauses are written is alarming. The language is so broad that it basically says that a publisher can cancel a project and demand repayment of the advance if an author does anything the publisher does not like.
I can think of lots of behavior that publisher might not like–or that they might have disliked not so long ago. Voting for the wrong candidate, say. Dating or marrying someone of the wrong race or gender. Getting arrested at a protest. Joining a union. Becoming a member of the Communist Party. Contracting HIV. Remember when getting married was grounds for firing a teacher?
In the standard publishing contract, the publisher already has broad power to cancel a project for any reason, up to and including that they just don’t like the manuscript very much. They don’t need a morals clause for that. But normally, unless an author has done an astonishingly poor job, the advance is not repaid. That’s what publishers are trying to change.
I’m not a fan.
I’m not a fan of my publisher deciding when my behavior is or isn’t acceptable. (It’s their job to decide this about my manuscripts, not my actions.) I’m not a fan of writing clauses so broad and sweeping that they apply to a wide range of behavior and speech when the publisher (for now) is only trying to combat a narrow one.
Mostly, I’m not a fan because what these clauses do is take power out of the hands of authors and hand it to publishers. Considering that the children’s book field is made up mostly of women, this is especially ironic. Taking power away from individual women and putting it in the hands of large corporations (mostly controlled at their highest levels by men) is really, really not what the #MeToo movement is about.
So what’s the answer, if it isn’t a morals clause? I’m not really sure. Except to remind publishers that humans beings are messy, unpredictable, and sometimes dreadful. And so any enterprise that involves making contracts with human beings is going to involve some risk that they will behave in ways you don’t like.
Perhaps that’s just a risk that publishers have to live with.
Read MoreNew Book!
Little, Brown has accepted a new picture book manuscript called Brown Is Warm, Black Is Bright, all about the joys and beauties of these two gorgeous colors. (Ever noticed how often books on color actually leave out brown and black? What’s up with that?) I’m so happy this book has found a home! Can’t wait to hear who the illustrator will be.
Here is my favorite stanza. (Picture a child curled up in bed with a beloved pet.)
Read MoreBrown is warm
and soft and breathing
curled up next to me.
Epilog to Deadly Wish
My editor and I disagreed about the epilog to Deadly Wish. She is a very sagacious lady so quite likely she is right and I am wrong, but I have always been fond of this epilog. If you’d like to find out what happened to the pearl with the demon’s soul inside once it ended up in the possession of a sailor from Portugal (thought by Kata to be a demon because who else could smell so bad?), read on!
Read MoreUp ahead, Luys could see the place where the path curved around an ancient chestnut tree. He knew that it would head down a small slope through Jorge Velho’s olive grove, and from there he’d be able to see the lights of his village.
Night was gathering, but Luys didn’t need light to walk this path. Even after five years, his feet knew every stone, every rut, every hollow. And his heart was fuller of joy with every step.
Happy Independence Day
How to portray a woman who did not leave a photograph or a portrait behind her? Her shadow on the wall testifies to both her presence and her absence from much of the historical record.
It’s the Fifth of July (okay, posting a day late), so it’s appropriate to take a moment to be glad–perhaps “satisfied” is a better word–that Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s planation, has opened a new exhibit to explore and explain the life of Sally Hemings.
What should we call Sally Hemings? Jefferson’s slave? His mistress? His victim? His common-law-wife? His sister-in-law? Mother of his enslaved children?
Or how about simply a woman who had independence in her grasp but gave it up, only to work hard and negotiate skillfully to achieve independence for her children.
Sally Hemings features in my adaptation of Jon Meacham’s biography of Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher.
In his farm book, Jefferson recorded the fate of his crops and the details of the lives of his slaves. He coolly noted down the births of his own children with Sally Hemings. These children did not receive the tender care that Patsy’s and Polly’s boys and girls knew from their grandfather. Jefferson was apparently able to think of them as something entirely separate from his cherished life with his white family. “He was not in the habit of showing…fatherly affection to us as children,” said Jefferson’s son Madison Hemings.
She also gets a mention in Secrets of the Seven: The Eagle’s Quill.
Read MoreWe Interrupt Your Work to Present This Puppy
Please do not write. Please snuggle. Thank you.
This is Karma, sixth month old rescue pup who is doing her best to ensure that I never write another word. Stay tuned for more insights about writing, children’s literature, house training, and chewing the furniture.
Read MoreChildren Make Good Teachers
Okay, these particular people are VERY white.
Sometimes we need people to help us look at our own work with new eyes. Children are especially good at this. They don’t come with automatic reverence (assuming that something is good because it’s been published, or won a medal, or been labeled a classic.) And they have that special brand of ruthless honesty, particularly when they are related to us.
This can be a helpful, as when my daughter pointed out to me that all of the people in the illustrations of Imagine a Night are white.
“What?” I said. “No way!”
I grabbed the book. We looked through it together. And of course she was correct. Sixteen illustrations in that book and not a single one of them showed a person with something other than pale skin.
Well, maybe it’s just a coincidence? Maybe the companion books, Imagine a Day and Imagine a Place, show more variety?
Nope. A total of forty-nine pieces of art in all three books, and not a single person with a significant amount of melanin.
My immediate reaction was to explain that this was not my fault. I did not paint the images (the illustrator did that). I did not select them for the book (the editor did that). The book is not narrative or sequential, so I was concentrating hard on each image individually as I wrote the poems that went with them, not thinking as much about the book as a whole.
But I bit those thoughts back. They are true, but they are not particularly relevant here. Because I may not have been able to change the illustrator’s paintbrush or the editor’s choices (I was brought onto this project quite late, after the selections were already made), but I certainly could have done one thing.
I could have noticed.
Imagine a Night was published in 2003. It’s still in print. I’ve read it aloud hundreds of times. I’ve used it in countless school workshops. And I never noticed that there is not a single person of color in the entire book. How could I not have seen?
If all the people in the art had been male, I bet I would have noticed.
My own blind spots continue to amaze and dismay me. Thanks to the people who keep helping me see what I should have seen myself, but did not. I can’t change this book, but I can try to do better in the future. I can try to notice more. And once I’ve noticed, I can try to take action.
Read MoreChenery Book Festival
I love this book festival in Belmont, Massachusetts! Always a great crowd of interesting, engaging, talented writers and kids, parents, and teachers who are enthusiastic about books. This year I brought along the Ninja Rope Puzzle to promote Deadly Flowers and Deadly Wish, and watched pair after pair of brave aspiring ninjas try to get themselves untangled. They all made it (eventually!)
Sarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews