Any Legal Lee's wanna help me decipher this statement?

Got a different story I'm about to self publish, was gonna use amazon, but now I'm cautious after reading this

6.2 Ownership
Subject to the licenses set forth in this Section 6 and the following sentence, and as between the parties, you retain all right, title and interest in and to the Content, including all patent, copyright, trademark, service mark, mask work, moral right, trade secret or other intellectual property or proprietary right (collectively, "Intellectual Property Rights") therein.

Subject to your underlying rights in the Content, as between the parties, we will own all right, title and interest in and to the templates and other materials created, provided or used by us in our performance under this Agreement (including Source Files and Packaging Materials), including all Intellectual Property Rights therein.
(Whole Member agreement here: https://eu.createspace.com/pub/signup/view.memberagreement.do)

Does that mean they own the rights to my stuff, or am I reading that wrong?

Thanks for taking a look

Rogue

Not saying this for certain, but it does read like that. At the minimum, it would give them rights to use any part of your submission in any way they like. Typically overextending statements like this are used so that they can use it for any sort of marketing, quotes, product descriptions, etc. They don't want you coming back and suing because they used a quote or the cover from your story on their ad that led to millions in profit for them.


The part "as between the parties" indicates (to me) that it is to ensure that a separate third party also has no extra rights that they may claim.

I'm not lawyer, just my interpretation after dealing with random bs language for agreements at work (county government).

You own your stuff but the stuff used from it to market the books is theirs and you give them permission. They can’t sell your stuff if they have no claim to it. I’m also a small time publisher and I’ll just tell the author I now own the material out right. Solves any ambiguity that way, but with the option of the author to buy back the rights at a reasonable cost. I just don’t need the agro.

So far nobody wants to buy their stuff back as they keep writing and creating. The authors and books are cataloged together anyway so every one knows they wrote it. So don’t sweat it.


Also it is we - the publishers - that put our trademarks (and yes my company logo is a registered trademark - ended up a seven year fight to get that). Your book with our name and reputation to back everything up. We copyright it properly and submit copies we produce to the cataloging entities in each country and have lawyers to sue people that infring on the rights of the author. And we pay you royalties. Be nice to your publisher.