The new issue of the Woman’s Weekly fiction special is out now, promising its readers short stories from writers who “never fail to come up with new twists and turns and unexpected plots”. But, in a twist that may have surprised the editors, authors are up in arms over a new contract that demands all rights for any story it publishes.
Woman’s Weekly has been a British newsstand favourite for a century, with its blend of cakes and crochet, fiction and fashion. It is now part of media giant TI Media, which produces magazines including Homes & Gardens and Marie Claire.
The new contract cuts its fee per story from £150 to £100, and demands that writers assign them, in the words of one contract seen by the Guardian, “all of your right, title and interest in, and to, the copyright and all other rights of every kind or description in the material(s) commissioned from you, throughout the World whether those rights are now known or are created in the future and in each case for the full period of existence of those rights”.
The contract also gives TI Media rights to adaptation and moral rights, meaning the story can be republished without a credit, and requires the author to seek permission to republish it in a book.
One author who writes for Woman’s Weekly regularly under the name Jo Styles, said that she would not be signing the new contract.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
