From Hollywood to Hardbacks: negotiating the morality clause in 21st-century book publishing

Citation

Bullen C (2021) From Hollywood to Hardbacks: negotiating the morality clause in 21st-century book publishing. SHARP 2021: Moving Texts, Muenster, Germany, 26.07.2021-30.07.2021.

Abstract
The morality clause has increasingly appeared in author contracts across the book publishing industry since 2017 (Deahl 2018). Originating in 1920s Hollywood film contracts, these clauses ‘control the antics of entertainers’ (Abril and Greene 2017) and have found their way into U.K. author contracts in the 21st century. In the wake of the #MeToo movement and other progressive social movements, book publishers are eager to demonstrate their moral upstanding by making their authors accountable for behaviours that are deemed problematic. The morality clause inserted in contracts gives them the power to do so. However, the morality clause has disrupted the relationship between publishers and authors across the U.K. due to its ambiguous nature. The Society of Authors trade union has stated its disapproval of the clause and urges authors to negotiate them out of contracts. In 2018, the Royal Society of Literature released a statement addressing the increasing pressure on authors’ behaviour due to these clauses, arguing that ‘being good’ should not be conflated with ‘good writing.’ It is often unclear to an author what behaviours could trigger the morality clause. Yet, it is in publishers’ best interests to implement a wide-reaching, 'vague' morality clause for maximum protection (Pinguelo and Cedrone 2009). This paper explores the morality clause’s impact on the U.K. and U.S. publishing industry through a socio-legal lens, demonstrating the disparity between how the publishing industry receives the morality clause and how it is received in a court of law. It will explore the findings from semi-structured interviews to demonstrate what awareness of this clause exists in the publishing industry, and discuss how literary agents and authors deal with the morality clause during the negotiation stage of publishing agreements.

Keywords
morality clause; publishing; publishing agreements; literature