: Can I change my work and seel it if I am published with no contract? I have had a falling out with my publisher. She has published many of my works and is telling me I am not legally

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IANAL, but ...

You say you have no written contract. Do you have any correspondence? Letters, emails, etc? Anything in writing to say who agreed to what? If not, if all you have is a verbal agreement, then legally that is still a binding contract. But the problem with verbal contracts is that there's no way to prove what was agreed to, and the parties may well not remember exactly what was said. If there are no witnesses, I'd guess a court is just going to make assumptions based on what people typically do in such an agreement. I'm frankly not sure exactly what the "typical" publishing contract says. Most writers do not sign away all rights to their work.

Did anyone involved register the copyright? If so, is it registered under your name, or as a "work done for hire" for the publisher? If it's registered under your name, and there is no contract saying you sold the writes to the publisher, than you still own the copyright. If the copyright was never registered and never sold, than by default the author owns it.

You would have to have a VERY restrictive agreement to say that you cannot write a totally new book and publish it elsewhere. The law does not generally assume that because you sold something to person X that this means that you have given up all right for the rest of your life to ever sell something to anyone other than X. Like if my boss fired me from my current job, I can't imagine that any court in the world would say that I'm not allowed to ever work for any other company ever. Unless you have a contract saying that you give this publisher exclusive rights to anything you write for some period of time, I'd think you could take new material anywhere.

As always on legal questions, it would be smart to check with a lawyer. I don't know how lawyers work wherever you live, but lawyers I've worked with will generally give you an "initial consultation" for somewhere between free and 0.

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I am writing as a published author.

The "standard" contract term is the so-called "next work" right. That is, the author needs to offer the publisher the rights to the "next work" s/he produces. If the two parties, bargaining under good faith, can come to an accord on the work, the "next work" clause applies to the following product. If there is no agreement on the "current" work, the relationship is broken. Absent written evidence to the contrary, this is the interpretation that the courts may take based on the industry practice.

This practice would protect both parties' rights. The publisher gets the "right of first refusal" on the first subsequent work. The author would have the right to leave after one failed deal.

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There are two issues, the copyright registration, and the contract.

First Make sure the copyright is registered to you. Right away, before you finish reading the answer. Now!

The second is the contract, if verbal is still there. In writing notify your publisher that you are terminating all rights to future publication of your works and that you are requiring a final accounting. A lawyer can help you write it. A good copyright attorney should be able to do this in less than fifteen minutes (templates are wonderful) and any lawyer should be able to do it in a couple hours. at this point you should (as long as you have not signed any licencing agreements or copyright assignments) be able to do what you wish with your work.

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