[VengefulCynic]

I will confess to being somewhat concerned regarding the author's legal plight. He's making a claim of bad faith on the other party to his contract and saying, "due to it many breaches of contract, O’Reilly has no choice now but to surrender its rights to the book, so I’m free to publish the second edition of Information Dashboard Design through Analytics Press."

While I believe that he would probably prevail, the author is building his future plans on the assumption that O'Reilly won't sue him for breach of contract and, if they do, the courts will rule in his favor. If I were Analytics Press, I'd be very uneasy being the third wheel in this sort of relationship with the unresolved matter of breach of contract still in play.

[ncallaway]

> He's making a claim of bad faith on the other party

The way I read it, the author never made a claim of bad faith. The sentence: "I doubt that any breaches of contract were willful" indicates the author assumed they were dealing in good faith (just incompetently).

> and saying, "due to it many breaches of contract, O’Reilly has no choice now but to surrender its rights to the book, so I’m free to publish the second edition of Information Dashboard Design through Analytics Press."

From what I read, the author wasn't just saying "they breached the contract, therefore I get my rights back"; he had this written into the contract via an amendment after the first breach: "an amendment to the contract was written to prevent this from happening again, or in the event that it did, to make sure that O’Reilly surrendered its rights to the book, posthaste".

> If I were Analytics Press, I'd be very uneasy being the third wheel in this sort of relationship with the unresolved matter of breach of contract still in play.

Were I Analytics Press, I would certainly want to examine the facts in question to make sure the author held the rights to the book. If I were able to verify:

a) The author had a valid provision in his contract that caused the rights to revert to him in the event of a breach, AND b) Clear evidence of a breach of contract by the previous publisher

I'd likely be willing to take on the risk in this situation. The important thing is to acknowledge the risk, and do your due diligence to verify that the party has the rights they are providing you.

[hga]

Their stopping print and electronic publication of the first edition is significant. Certainly not enough to be sure they won't sue, but they'd have to have gone way beyond "lost their soul" to go that far and generate a massive amount of negative publicity.

[lmickh]

He claims the rights have reverted back to him. They would be stupid to risk a lawsuit by continuing to sell the book. Especially since based on the tone of the article, it doesn't sound like it was doing particularly well anyway.

I think he has some valid points about O'Reilly, but stopping the sale of the book is a move about avoiding risk of lawsuit with someone who has made it clear that he will take action if need be. Saying that it was out of spite is only his personal interpretation.

[benatkin]

Yes, and I think this means that they let him know that he may proceed, and that he doesn't also have legal issues hanging over his head. If it were me I'd prefer to have a clean break from the publisher before publishing a new book, than to have a book that's still being printed by a publisher who used to assert exclusive control of it while trying to print the next edition of it myself.

[mrgoldenbrown]

I think he's counting on the part of the contract that he describes as being roughly "If O'Reilly fails to do X, Y and Z, the rights automatically revert to me." It sounds like he is confident that it is O'Reilly that breached the contract, not him.

[ecspike]

There is also a provision in some publishing contracts that say that once the book goes out of print, the rights revert back to you.

[unreal37]

In publishing contracts I've entered into with major publishers, it usually says the rights revert back to me after 2 years of it being out of print. Not immediately.

[RougeFemme]

If that's the case here, refusing to print any more copies of the first edition is a bad business decision for O'Reily.

[jeremyjh]

Right and he's already banking on the fact that he has won that lawsuit.

[darkarmani]

Fortunately, his follow up book: "Now you see it" has been out since 2009.

[dgudkov]

Excellent book! Must read for anyone who deals with data visualization.