Tokyopact

There's been a firestorm of controversy about Tokyopop's "down with the kids" plain-English contract. The language is silly, some of the legal points are muddled because the contract tries to explain it as if to a very young target audience (which, in part, it is in fact meant for), and there's an awful misstep in the folksy-aw-shucks language that just ends up insulting the entire nation of France (they are too fancy there for us, what with their French fries and French toast and fizzy water).

I commented a bit on Lea Hernandez's lj, where I made the mistake of saying it looked better than a lot of work-for-hire and even some royalty-based agreements I've seen in publishing (text novels, illustrated books, graphic novels, roleplaying games...). But I backed away from commenting further and didn't publicly post the first blog post I wrote about it, because the furious negative response to the contract didn't seem worth fighting. There has been a lot of "everyone who's anyone in the biz says this is a bad contract, so it is" talk. And I have my own contract battles to fight, and I don't draw manga, so perhaps it isn't my battle... But, here, BradFox.com says what I wanted to say. So now I don't have to :)