Ordinarily, when I read the word print-on-demand in a press release, I reach for my delete button, but there was something about the story one publicist recently tried to tell us about her author that simply didn't sound right. (Identifying details have been changed or elided so as not to put the author on the spot.) "When John Doe's agent found a publisher for his humorous memoir," this press release began, "he was elated. Until he received his contract. While the editor assigned to Doe had assured him that [the book] would be published in the spring of 2007, the contract allowed the publisher the flexibility to wait until 2008. Additionally, the publisher reserved the right to make material changes to the manuscript without Doe's consent." At which point, the author protests a bit, but then, he says, "my agent tried to assure me that this was just lawyers being lawyers," and, to make a long story short, he ends up choosing iUniverse to get the book out this summer.

Now, the part about flexible scheduling didn't strike me as unreasonable on the publisher's part; that's just the way the business operates, and you can either accept it or resent it, whatever. What got me was the bit about "material changes to the manuscript without Doe's consent," and how Doe's agent allegedly couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it. That didn't sound like any competent agent I know, so I passed the basic story on to two agents to get their reactions.

"What he's got is boilerplate Stage 1," said the first agent, "the contract publishers offer up to everyone who doesn't have an agency contract on file with them. A good agent negotiates all that stuff away." My second source elaborated:

"Publishers need to move books all the time and should have the right to let things slip a season or two. But no, the publisher cannot make wholesale changes to the manuscript. It can edit it for mistakes, accuracy, or length. You can even argue with them over typos, copyediting, or line editing. They can strong arm you into making changes—but they can't contractually rewrite the book without you."

(Note that we're not talking about work-for-hire situations, which of course are entirely different.)

"It's not unusual they would allow for 12 or even 24 months before publication," the first agent agreed. "But it's also true that iUniverse is exactly the right place to go if you don't want to deal with any of that and you don't want a single word of your book changed." (Which may well answer one of the questions the other agent had after reading the press release: "Who gets a publicist to publicize how they avoided getting screwed by a big publisher?")

The author's comments certainly support that interpretation. "I would have approached other publishers and tried to get a more author-friendly contract," he says of his experience, "but [my memoir] is a summer book and the timeline just wasn't realistic. I would have had to wait until 2008." This doesn't necessarily strike me as the greatest hardship in the world, but I'm the first to admit my priorities aren't necessarily for everybody, so more power to him in getting his book published the way he wanted. That said, when he declares "I'll never have to publish under terms that are so author unfriendly," I can't help thinking, well, you wouldn't have to in the first place, if your agent had shown as much hustle as you have.