For most people, a book contract is a cause for celebration, so much so that reading legal fine print can seem churlish, if not outright ungrateful.
Judith Shulevitz, reporting for the New York Times in Must Writers Be Moral? Their Contracts May Require It, shines a light on a little known clause increasingly creeping into writers’ contracts: the morality clause.
A morality clause lets a publisher back out of a deal if the the writer “becomes the subject of public disrepute, contempt, complaints, or scandals.” Naturally, none of the key terms are defined.
Shulevitz criticizes these clauses:
The problem with letting publishers back out of contracts with noncelebrity, nonreligious, non-children’s book authors on the grounds of immorality is that immorality is a slippery concept. Publishers have little incentive to clarify what they mean by it, and the public is fickle in what it takes umbrage at.
If you were presented with a book contract with a morality clause, what would you do? Would you hold your nose, sign, and hope for the best? Or would you push back and argue that the clause itself is offensive because it gives the publisher too much power?