Time marches on

[ksmith]

Received a contract today as an email attachment. Gee.

I do need to print out and sign four copies. Legal size paper always complicates everything--what is the purpose of the size difference? I'm sure it's a reason grounded in tradition and the fact that documents would probably be twice as long if they didn't make the paper longer, but still.

Electronic signatures would be nice at a time like this.

Comments

congratulations

[(Anonymous)]

It is official; congratulations.
Lynn

Re: congratulations

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

It was a nice email surprise.

[delkytlar.livejournal.com]

Most publishing houses have used Legal sized paper for a long time now. In some cases, their filing systems can handle it. In others, even the house has trouble getting Legal paper to fit in their files, so they have to fold it.

My house did a cost analysis recently, and determined that even though Letter sized contracts run to more pages, it's actually cheaper because Letter sized paper gets bought in greater quantities than Legal, thus saving money (as does getting authors and agents to print them out).

Is the document they sent you a Word file or a PDF (the two most common contract file types)? If Word, and you can change the paper size, you could notify the Contracts Manager at the house that you do not have the capability to print Legal, and ask that they either resend the doc formatted for Letter, or ask them to mail you hardcopies for signature. A decent Contracts pro will always acquiesce to your preferences.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. It was a Word file. I was actually able to print it out on Legal. Now I'm trying to figure out how to mail the four copies without folding them, which probably isn't necessary. It's just that folding them offends my sense of neatness for some reason.