The contract stuff continued

I'm just going to copy here what Mike wrote back to me and my response to him.

At 18 September, 2010 ,  Mike said...

I likely did keep the signed contract... somewhere. It may lie in some forgotten envelope amid the mass of books, notes, and scribbled sketches that I appear to enjoy surrounding myself with. (As I noted in my 1st post, keeping these important documents in an easily found safe place has been an important lesson.) But I'm not sure what advantage finding my copy of the signed contract does me. I know they have a signed copy (unless they have misfiled it along with the entire Shorts program) and I know exactly what that signed copy says. For better or worse I'm bound by it now.

I think I would like to work on getting out the 30 day notice to them that would revert the rights of the story to me.

Along with the contract I also have a copy of the Amazon Shorts Welcome kit. I have the office address of the two guys that ran it. I have their e-mails. Heck, I have their phone numbers... that is if they are still working for Amazon.

So do I need to send them a registered letter (so that I have proof that it was sent) stating that I am given them notice?
 

At 19 September, 2010 ,  Welwyn-on-books said...

If you live in the USA a registered letter giving them the 30 days notice is fine. Or if you have a cheaper form of "courier" type service through the USPS that will give you a tracking number and (for a fee) will let you require a signature. If you live outside the USA, you will have to investigate what your country's postal service can do for you to send the letter relatively cheaply across borders and still give you proof that Amazon received your notice when they did, plus a signature. The courier was the most expensive option, but in some countries it is the only one.

Or, wait, I just thought of something. You can fax them your notice unless they specify otherwise in their contract with you. A fax is a legal document (at least, it is in Canada)  if it is signed by you. Usually a fax machine also prints out a document saying what date and time the fax was received. So that would be the cheapest option of all, of sending your notice and receiving proof that it got there on paper to save. Sorry I didn't think of that sooner. If you don't have a fax machine, most copy places will fax documents for you for a reasonable fee.

Email is not considered a legal document.

The thing is to follow any method that Amazon has asked for from you on its contract. It's good that you kept all that contact information. Even if a person has moved on, their position is still likely there.

Mike, regarding your keeping or not keeping the signed contract, I think you did amazingly well in dealing with this first important sale to an online organization as big as Amazon. The only reason I mentioned it is because I've actually seen people not get paid *big* amounts of money (e.g. for TV adaptation.) In that case you would need *their* signature on your contract to sue.  You haven't said what you would do in such a case, so I thought I'd mention it.

So do you want me to stop talking about your contract now? I've given everyone tons of information already, but there's tons more for any contract and I was loving it that we had a real one with real problems in it.  (So many of the things their highly paid lawyers have done are tiny phrases that nobody notices until they are burned by them.   I've been burned, unfortunately many times..  But if we've done all you need right now, that's fine too.  Feel free to come back to the topic at any time. 

We're actually getting quite a few people reading this blog, just reading it without saying they're there.  There have been big spikes in the visitor register on the days we have talked about the contract.  So there is obviously a lot of interest out there.  If anyone else has any questions please feel free to post a comment/question here.