A contract is an agreement in detail between two or more parties.
Usually,
a contract stipulates the terms under which
certain work will be done, and the compensation
which will be offered by the employer to
the worker for that work.
I can't tell you all there is to know about
contracts, because it can't be known. Agreements
between the person assigning the work and the
person doing the work are almost always different,
at least in a few details. And new situations
demand forseeing new contingencies.
But certain clauses appear again and again in
contracts between authors/photographers and
publishers because the contingencies they deal
with may well arise during the life of the agreement.
Contract Checklist: here's an annotated list of the most important clauses which you, as an author, must have in your travel guidebook contract, with notes on some clauses which you should avoid.
Here are thoughts on some of the most important clauses in author-publisher contracts.
Here is a real-life example of contract negotiation:
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