Rachel Kaufman is the next exciting guest blogger in our line up. Despite the fact that she has no kids (hey – Lorna technically didn’t have any until a few weeks ago), we are really excited to have her join us. She is a freelance features writer based in Washington DC and runs A Like Affair With Words blog. Her professional dreams include (and I quote) “to someday join the Gawker network so she can post about the latest dangling participle scandals and split infinitives.”

You made it. You’ve sold your first article to a magazine, the light of prestige at the end of a very long, SEO-lined tunnel. (With apologies to Tamara, who turned a spectacular phrase that I couldn’t resist borrowing.) You’ve been sent a three-page contract set in 4 point type, and once you sign, your check will be in the mail and your name will be in lights all across the country (wouldn’t that be nice?) But really, though the ‘Net is wild and wooly, the world of print is not much better. Always make sure you know what you’re signing before you put your name on the dotted line.

First, a disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, law student, or even frequent Law & Order watcher. If you have questions about a contract, please contact someone knowledgeable (like an actual lawyer). But if you’re just hoping to get some basic information about what to expect, read on!

Here are a few terms you might come across in a magazine contract:

Work made for hire : Under a work-for-hire agreement, the company, magazine, or blog paying you to write for them becomes, legally, the creator of your work–even though you wrote it. (Much more common on the Internet, but certainly not unheard of in the print world.) Work for hire may or may not come with a byline. As in, it’s possible to have your name on an article yet still not be regarded as the author of the work. You can’t resell it, reprint it, or share it without the company’s permission. And they can. This is yucky, and if you can avoid signing this, do so.

All rights : For most purposes, identical to work-for-hire (though you are much more likely to get a byline).

Reprint rights : You’re not giving the company the right to reprint your work elsewhere; you’re offering them the right to use a reprint of your article. Similar to one-time rights, where a magazine is allowed to print your piece once, but not necessarily first.

First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) : Now we’re getting somewhere! Excepting reprint rights (where you get money for an article you’ve already written), FNASRs are the most favorable to a writer. It means that a magazine can print your article once, anywhere in North America, after which point the rights revert to you and you can do what you want with your work. Contracts offering FNASR usually ask for more, though, such as:

• Electronic rights–the right to publish your piece on CD-ROM, tape drives, the Web, e-mail, etc.

• Internet rights–the same as above, except without CD-ROM and other electronic medium support.

• Exclusive rights–usually for a fixed length of time. For 90 days, 6 months, or a year, you cannot resell your work. After the exclusivity period ends, rights revert to you.

Those are the main three phrases you’ll see in contracts. But often it’s more complicated than that. How about a contract, from X magazine, that stipulates authors must offer all future ideas to X first? (Are you kidding?) How about one that says writers cannot resell their work unless “the lead and some other content” is changed? (Could that be any more vague?) Or the magazine that buys First North American Serial Rights with the non-exclusive right to republish in any form for eternity? (So I can compete with you to resell my writing?) I’ve seen all of these on real contracts. They are more or less common (though the first one blew my mind when I saw it). But just because something is common doesn’t mean you have to take it.

If you’re offered a contract that is really unfair to you: In short, if the publisher insists on buying all rights, ask for more money (or for their rights to expire after a certain amount of time.) If their budget is tight, offer FNASRs with the option to negotiate re-use in the future.

One last note about print market contracts: Make sure there is a kill fee clause. From my explorations on the Internet and paid blogging sites, it looks like this concept hasn’t quite caught on–perhaps because of the quick turnaround–but in magazine and other print writing it is a must. What this means is that if you are assigned a story to write, it’s accepted, but it doesn’t run (because they run out of space, the editor changes her mind, whatever), you are entitled to a percentage of your agreed-upon fee. This is, as they say, totally sweet.

You don’t have to let contracts get the best of you–just educate yourself and know what you’re signing, and success inevitably will follow.

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