JOHN J. NANCE, Plaintiff, - against - RANDOM HOUSE, INC. d/b/a/ BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL PUBLISHING GROUP, and ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INCORPORATED, Defendants., 212 F. Supp. 2d 268

Summary

The author contracted with the publishers whereby he was to receive $ 1 million per book, with payments to be made at stages during his performance of the contract. The contract required that any manuscript be complete and satisfactory to the publishers and that the publishers could reject a manuscript if they found it unacceptable for any reason. The publishers required the author to make many changes to his work, and ultimately rejected his final manuscript for one book, despite having advanced him $ 350,000. The author sold the rejected manuscript to another publisher, and filed suit. The court found the publishers had broad discretion under the contract to reject manuscripts, and had in any event not acted fraudulently or in bad faith in doing so. The publishers were also entitled to recoup the advances paid to the author, less the amount he had already repaid.