Commission Contracts

When you take a professional job, you of course want to make sure you are going to be compensated for it, just as anyone hiring you wants to make sure that you’re going to deliver a product that they are happy with.   To enforce this agreement, the company can issue a contract, which is a legally binding agreement.  Alternatively, you can also issue a contract, and should do so when you take on a new client or job!  Without a contract you have no way to enforce the agreement and to guarantee you will be paid for your work.  But you need to be careful, because even with a contract you can be burned, so you have to read the fine print.

Most contracts cover a few basic points:

• Who, Why, When, What- Who are the parties involved, Why is Party A hiring Party B, When is the agreement taking place, and What compensation is being given to Party B.
• Scope of the project and specifics or details.  This includes payment details which are of utmost importance.
• Responsibilities of each party.  The artist agrees to certain revisions and progress reports, the client agrees not to intentionally destroy the work, etc.
• Contract termination.  What happens if the artist cannot produce the work as specified or the client changes their mind.
• Legal issues and liabilities. Who owns the work, who pays attorney fees if things go sour, licensing agreement, etc.

I’ve created a contract for example and also available for use.  It’s an amalgamation of many contracts that I’ve found free on the web (google: art contracts) and what I consider to be the best parts of each. It’s under Creative Commons so you can feel free to use and edit it to suit your purposes.  I explain the contract in more detail after the jump.

For now, you can find the sample contract here.

You Are Your Own Best Advocate

Contracts don’t have to be written in legal-ese.  You can easily write your own contract to suit your style, as this web developer does.  Just be sure you cover the finer points so you’re covered.

Things to watch out for:

Your work, your rights. Do NOT just give the rights to your work away.  If someone wants the rights, it is typical to charge 150% to 200% more for the work.  You can retain the rights to your work and license it out to a company just as easily.

Payment schedule. Some companies pay a deposit for the work, then the rest after acceptance (or as the job is done), others pay the full amount on acceptance, and still others pay after publication.  If you can, try to get the jobs where your work will be paid for immediately.  Publication can take a really, really long time, and companies can go bankrupt before your work ever sees the printing press.  A piece you may be relying on for your food and electricity might not hit the shelves until a year later.  That would be bad.  You would be very hungry.

Law and Order

There is help out there for those seeking legal counsel, provided for free (I know, I couldn’t believe it either).

The Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA) has branches in over thirty states and internationally.  You can find them through this directory.