Why New Authors Don't Need an NDA
And why I’m not likely to sign yours if you have one
Image credit: Steve Buissinne from Pixabay
If you are a writer, getting into a group with like-minded writers can be a really terrific thing. The encouragement is handy, and you can learn quite a bit from each other.
The pitfall of being in a group of only writers is that it can become an echo chamber, where people repeat what they've heard without basis in fact. This often results in a lot of people agreeing with each other about some really bad advice and promoting it as good advice.
The nondisclosure agreement
There's a lot of bad advice to choose from, but the one I am focusing on today is the topic of a nondisclosure agreement: an NDA.
A nondisclosure agreement simply says that you promise not to disclose the contents of what you're working on. Asking someone to sign this sounds like a great idea, but it's actually not—most professional editors already have a clause in their contract that states they won’t share the work, so an NDA is redundant.
Unfortunately, many writers groups will attempt to convince their members that an editor will either prove or disprove their legitimacy by their agreement or refusal to sign an NDA.
This gem of advice couldn't be more wrong. A great many professional editors—dare I say the majority—will pass on signing an NDA more often than not, especially if they have a contract, and/or the writer is a new author.
The reasons for this are many and varied, and most directly correlate with the very reasons the author thinks they need one.
Who really needs an NDA?
If you’re a celebrity and need confidentiality over and above the norm, an NDA isn’t unreasonable.
If you’re working with a company which requires specific nondisclosure agreements due to the nature of the work, and those agreements are signed from the top on down the ladder, an NDA isn’t unreasonable.
If you need a technical edit on work that reveals confidential details of a third party, an NDA isn’t unreasonable.
What makes an NDA an unreasonable request?
As I mentioned above, most editors have a clause in their contract that explicitly states that they will not discuss the work in their possession with others. There are rare times when we may ask other editors for clarification of a word or phrase (“Is this common in American English? I’ve never heard it before”) but everyone is careful to not divulge details about writing that’s not their own.
When someone asks an editor to sign an NDA, it usually indicates that the author doesn’t understand the publishing industry. NDAs are not a common thing for works of fiction, especially for an unknown author.
To ask someone in the pre-publication phase to sign an NDA is also an indicator that the author doesn’t understand how book thieves work either. Book thieves are lazy, as a general rule, and aren’t going to bother stealing a book they need to actually work on. They want a finished product.
If someone is going to steal a book, they’re more likely to be a person who has had no contact with the author, ever, and who downloaded a free version from an online source and adjusted the names and cover just enough to make it “new.”
No self-respecting professional is going to risk their own name and business. Without insulting the writing community, let’s look at the numbers. The odds of an editor stealing your unpublished manuscript to make millions from your hard work are so astronomically small that most people are not capable of the complex math to even calculate it.
The odds of anyone—editor or not—stealing it are incalculably small, but let's think about the logistics here. A professional editor has spent time, money, and effort into learning their job, creating a business, marketing that business, and keeping up to date on the latest in language trends simply to make a living from their chosen occupation. Why would they risk everything they worked for to steal a manuscript from an unknown writer on the off chance that it may be a success?
To take this a step further, let's work on the near certainty that one hit novel does not make a writer rich enough to quit the day job and live an extravagant lifestyle for the rest of their days. The thief in question would need to continually steal just to support themselves. But they’d also have to continually change their name so that each previous author can’t find them to press charges, AND they’d have to keep a business name out there to keep up the incoming supply of fresh manuscripts to steal. That's an awful lot of work for someone who already had a successful editing business to start with.
So why do new authors keep asking for NDAs?
The number one reason that stands out in my mind is that bad advice, once spoken, is really hard to get rid of. No matter how often that bad advice or false information has been publicly disproved, it still crops up. If you don’t believe me, just wait for this year’s batch of “I don’t give Facebook my permission to use blah blah blah” copy/paste posts to start the rounds.
Most of the bad advice passed around preys on people’s fears. Writers work hard on their books! It’s natural to want to keep the work safe, but that protectiveness can easily cross the line into paranoia. They don’t understand how copyright works.
As a result, authors are afraid of their work being stolen by editors. I was once asked to sign an NDA just to beta a book! I declined and explained why, and the author ghosted me.
Why this fear? Some of it is overconfidence: they’ve come up with an idea no one else could possibly have thought of, and if others hear about it, that book will get written before theirs is published. In the same vein, some authors assume their book is so amazing that it is worth stealing. These are typically the authors who also assume not a single comma should be changed either, but that’s another blog post for another day.
Some of the fear is based on hearing stories about a friend of a friend who had their manuscript stolen by someone who claimed to be an editor but wasn’t. This leads to a writer’s (false) assumption that an editor isn’t legitimate unless they’re willing to sign an NDA, even if the editor has a contract.
Why not just sign it to keep the peace?
Though it may seem easier to just sign, roll our eyes, and get on with the task at hand, we editors are known for reading every word of what’s put in front of us. And that’s led to some interesting discoveries in the nondisclosure agreements presented to us.
A common complaint among professional editors is that a new author will often present an NDA to be signed with no idea what most of the clauses contain or what they can mean legally for the one who signs it.
Recently in one of my editor groups, the discussion of NDAs came up (as it seems to quarterly). Editors from all over the world chimed in with their bad experiences with the authors who demanded them, and the clauses that were contained in them.
One editor said he had to redline a portion of the contract that stated that the editor would be financially liable if the book was not a success. This is absolute rubbish as anyone knows, since any book's success largely depends on whether it's written well, is marketed well, and is received well by the intended audience.
Another said a generic NDA, clearly grabbed from the internet, was sent to her that contained (among other things) a line that stated all arbitration was to be done in Argentina. The editor was in Canada and the author was in the US.
One editor said the NDA he received wanted him to take responsibility for “policing the world” for any possible breach, and yet another said in his, the editor would be held responsible for all legal fees if anyone, anywhere, discussed anything about the book without the author’s permission. What? Does that imply that the editor was responsible for Amazon reviews left by readers?
The author-editor relationship is built on trust
If you're going through the effort and expense of hiring an editor to help with your book, you should learn enough about them to trust they are not going to rip you off.
If an author doesn't trust the editor they’d like to hire, what are the reasons for that? If I may be frank, if you’ve hired an editor you haven't thoroughly researched, then you have no business demanding anything from them outside of the work you’re paying them for. That may seem a little direct, but the onus is on the client, not the provider, to do the research.
Those insistent on the NDA are not willing to trust the professional to act in a professional manner. And the sad truth is that these authors are most often hard to work with. Experience has shown them as people who hold others responsible for their success, don’t take well to criticism, are demanding, and are unlikely to be satisfied with the finished work.
So writers, how do you get past that fear that someone will steal your work? To put it bluntly, you need to just get over it. But be smart about it. Do your research and hire somebody reputable. That doesn't always mean the most expensive person out there, but also doesn't have to mean the cheapest. Be prepared to spend money on quality work. It's an investment like any other, and it will buy you the peace of mind of knowing that your manuscript is in good hands.
Happy writing!
