Now, Magazines Are Adopting Egregious Contract Terms

In February of 2025, several popular genre magazines were purchased by a company called 1Paragraph, Inc., which in tun is owned by an investment group called Assemble Media. They bought five magazines from the former own Penny Press: Analog, Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Ellery Queen, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The stories I've been hearing from writers that have dealt with 1 Paragraph over the last four months is nothing short of appalling. The rights' grabs includes merchandising, performance rights, and moral rights.

If you don't know what any of these are and you're a writer, please PLEASE get a copy of The Copyright Handbook by Stephen Fishman, J.D. You don't need a legal degree to understand it. It's written is plain English and easily understandable.

For me, the biggest problem in the contract is the moral rights. Moral rights last for the term of copyright, but what does "moral rights" mean? It means the writer has the right to have their work attributed to them, the right to object to derogatory treatment of the work, the right not to be identified as the author of someone else's work, and the right to privacy.

Moral rights can be confusing, so let's break them down with examples:

1) The right to have the work attributed - It means if a third-party publishes A Question of Balance, my name (or pseudonym) needs to be listed as the author. The third-party publisher cannot say Stephen King wrote A Question of Balance.

2) The right to object to derogatory treatment of the work - A third-party publisher cannot alter, remove, add, or adapt the work. For example, suppose the third-party publisher objects to any mention of the LGBT+ community. They cannot go through A Question of Balance and remove any references to berda or change Sister Dragonfly of Love to anything but a trans woman character.

Or perhaps, the publisher doesn't like the fact that Anthea and Luc's sex scenes fade to black, and they decide to add sex scenes that put Debbie Does Dallas to shame. Nope, nope, nopity-nope. They cannot do that.

3)  The right not to be identified as the author of someone else's work - This is basically the opposite of the first term. Say that third-party publisher tries to publish A Question of Balance under Stephen King's name because they think it will sell more copies. (It won't because Stephen King fans aren't that fucking stupid, but that's a story for another day.) Stephen King has every right to, and probably will. sue the crap out of the publisher.

4) The right to privacy -  No, that doesn't mean you can hide who you are as a writer. (Well, you can, but that's a whole 'nuther blog post.) What this means is if I write a Justice story just for my friend Angie, it doesn't mean I HAVE to publish for the rest of the world to read.

(Not that I'd ever do something like that to my readers. However, I have written private erotic for my husband that will never see the light of day because it was just for the two of us.)

The EU covers moral rights more thoroughly in their legislation, but moral rights exist in the U.S. as well. They cannot be transferred or assigned, but they can be waived. The problem is you have no idea of how someone will use your work.

 Say it with me, kids! MAKE SURE YOU READ YOUR CONTRACT!! If you don't understand it, hire someone who does to explain it to you!

Did I plan to submit to one of these magazines? Yes. Will I now? Not until they get a new owner because I don't trust these idiots.

 Which brings me to another point, all five magazines are still up for sale. In other words, the new owners don't have a vested interest in making these magazines work. So what's the point in submitting anyway?