Democracy School Publishing
CIRCULAR Fair Publishing Standard
Modules: v1.0-core
In force: from publication; revisions are versioned releases and apply prospectively (Module F).
In force: from publication; revisions are versioned releases and apply prospectively (Module F).
Preamble
The CIRCULAR Fair Publishing Standard is a published floor of fair-contract commitments that publishers meet in the engagements they enter through CIRCULAR -- and are free, and encouraged, to carry across their entire catalogue: CIRCULAR is the Standard's point of origin, not its boundary. It is held and administered by the Democracy School, which meets it in its own publishing before asking it of anyone else. It exists to make fairness visible: every commitment in it is a named, checkable term -- a defined base, a stated frequency, a numbered trigger -- so that a contributor can read their position at a glance and a publisher can demonstrate theirs.
The Standard mandates no business model and no payment level. It does not require advances, fees, or any royalty rate. It accommodates the whole continuum of honest publishing -- from profit-sharing collectives to conventional trade houses -- and asks the same discipline of all of them: transparency, exit, consent, credit. No publisher is excluded on principle; participation is conditional only on meeting the floor. There is one mark and one grade: every certified publisher carries the same mark, and a house whose terms exceed the floor is visible not through a higher badge but through its own published values.
Certification under this Standard is a human assessment made by the Democracy School. It is never a veto over any engagement, never a ranking, and never legal advice. The network on which CIRCULAR runs has no legal person and certifies nothing.
Module A -- Scope and Definitions
A1. Scope. The Standard applies to CIRCULAR-facilitated engagements entered into on or after the publisher's certification. Within CIRCULAR, a certified publisher sources and signs up frames: works brought into relation by two or more CIRCULAR members -- the frame's Contributors. A frame of one is an impossibility in CIRCULAR's relational architecture; within CIRCULAR, Contributors are always plural, and the capitalized term Contributors is used throughout this Standard wherever CIRCULAR engagements are meant. It does not reach back into existing contracts.
A1a. Extended application. The Standard is built to travel. A certified publisher may -- and is encouraged to -- apply it across its entire catalogue, within CIRCULAR and beyond. In extended application the elements bind per contributor, and works with a single contributor are ordinary. Nothing in extended application alters the CIRCULAR rule: within CIRCULAR there is no frame of one. Throughout the elements, references to "a contributor" or "the contributor" read distributively -- each of the frame's Contributors within CIRCULAR; each contributor in extended application.
A2. What the Standard never touches. The Standard binds contract terms between the publisher and the Contributors of a frame (within CIRCULAR), and between the publisher and each contributor (in extended application). It does not regulate a publisher's corporate form, internal accounting, margin, or profit; it does not prescribe a remuneration model; it does not audit books of account; and it does not adjudicate disputes.
A3. Credited creative contributor. The externally engaged creative contributors credited on a work: its author(s), translator(s), illustrator(s) and other visual artists, and credited freelance editors and designers. Salaried employees are remunerated by employment and sit outside the per-work rules; arm's-length service purchases (printing, platform charges) are not remuneration.
A4. The remuneration grammar. Every engagement composes each contributor's remuneration from three instruments:
- a share -- a percentage entitlement computed on a defined base (Element 1);
- a fee -- an agreed sum for a defined contribution;
- an advance -- a prepayment of the recipient's own future entitlement. An advance therefore presupposes a share.
A5. Rules attaching to the grammar. (a) An advance is recouped solely from the recipient's own entitlement; it is never deducted in defining any other contributor's base, and it may not be both deducted and offset. (b) Advances are non-returnable: commercial failure is never recovered from a contributor. (Recovery for non-delivery of the work is a delivery matter and is untouched.) (c) Recoupment is per engagement; joint accounting across a contributor's works requires express, separate agreement. (d) The contract may designate named income streams as non-recoupable; AI-licensing income is non-recoupable by default (Element 6). (e) Whether a house offers fees or advances at all is its own affair, published in its terms; how those instruments behave when offered is fixed by this Standard, identically for everyone.
In plain words. Within CIRCULAR, a publisher never signs up a person alone: it signs up a frame -- two or more members whose work belongs together -- and everything here protects all of them alike. Outside CIRCULAR, a publisher can run this same Standard across every book it makes, single authors included. Your pay can be built from three things: a percentage of what the work earns, a one-off payment, or money paid to you early against your own future percentage. Money paid to you early is yours to keep even if the book fails, and it is only ever worked off against your earnings -- never anyone else's, and never twice. Whether a publisher offers upfront money is their choice and must be stated openly; what upfront money means is the same everywhere.
Module B -- Equality of Remuneration Models
B1. Non-discrimination. The protections in this Standard are identical whatever the composition of a contributor's remuneration. No right in Elements 1-7 depends on whether an engagement is share-based, fee-based, advance-carrying, or any mixture.
B2. Composition confidentiality. The publisher, and the Democracy School in its certification role, must not disclose to third parties the remuneration composition of any engagement -- its shares, fees, advances, or amounts. The contributor remains entirely free to disclose their own terms. Certification records and the mark are composition-blind: nothing in the mark, the registry, or the certification distinguishes engagements by remuneration model.
B3. All-inclusive upfront. If any credited creative contributor receives upfront remuneration (a fee or an advance) for a work, the work's author(s) must also receive upfront remuneration, of at least the smallest upfront amount paid to any other credited creative contributor. A publisher that does not extend upfront payment to its authors pays no upfront to any credited creative contributor: everyone participates by share. There is never a work on which everyone is paid except the authors.
In plain words. Nobody gets a worse deal on rights, statements, or exit because of how they are paid. Nobody may broadcast whether your deal was profit-share or advance-based -- though you may always talk about your own terms. And if anyone on a book is paid upfront, its authors are too: at least as much as the smallest upfront payment anyone else received.
Module C -- The Floor: Seven Defining Elements
Every certified publisher's CIRCULAR-facilitated engagements meet all seven elements. Each element states what the contract must name; the named values appear in the headline block (Module D).
Element 1 -- A defined remuneration base
The contract names the base on which every share is computed, as one of: (a) the work's retail or list price; (b) the publisher's net receipts, under an exhaustive enumerated deduction schedule -- nothing is deductible that is not listed; third-party charges enter at documented cost; and charges flowing to the publisher itself or its affiliates are deductible only as a single declared line capped at 15% of the publisher's gross receipts from the work; (c) the Standard's default base: gross income from the work less documented third-party production and distribution charges at cost -- the natural base of print-on-demand publishing, offered ready-made to any house without its own.
The base never switches class by sales channel or discount level: a sale at deep discount is still accounted on the named base.
Promotional copies. Copies the publisher itself buys or gives away for promotion -- review, press, library, award submissions -- generate no income and bear no entitlements: their benefit accrues to all of the work's Contributors alike, so none is paid on them. They are counted against a named annual allowance in the contract (where none is named: 50 copies per work per year); distribution beyond the named allowance requires the Contributors' consent. Copies required by statutory legal deposit sit outside the allowance. A promotional copy that is in fact sold is a sale.
In plain words. Your contract must say, in a sentence you can point to, how your percentage is calculated -- on the cover price, or on what the publisher actually receives. If it is "what the publisher receives", the contract must list everything that comes off the top, the list is closed, and anything the publisher pays itself off the top is capped and declared. No small print may quietly switch the arithmetic for discounted sales. Copies given away to reviewers, libraries, and prizes earn nobody anything -- they are promotion for everyone alike -- but they are counted, capped, and shown on your statement, so "free copies" can never become a back door.
Element 2 -- Accounting transparency
Statements are issued at least semi-annually, within 60 days of each period's end, and enumerate every income stream -- sales by format, e-lending, subsidiary licences, AI licences -- including nil lines, and every deduction line where the base is net-defined, the promotional copies distributed against the named allowance, and the contributor's carried balance. A stream that earned nothing is shown as nothing; silence is not an option.
In plain words. Twice a year, within two months, you receive a statement that shows everything: what sold, in every form, what each stream earned -- including "nothing", spelled out -- what was deducted and why, and what you are owed. You never have to guess or ask.
Element 3 -- Payment terms, thresholds, and reserves
Payment of accrued entitlements accompanies each statement. To keep transfer costs from eating small balances, the contract may name a de-minimis threshold of at most EUR 50 (or equivalent): balances below it carry forward -- always visible on each statement -- and are paid when they cross the threshold, when the engagement ends or rights revert, or whenever the contributor requests payment, regardless of amount. Carried balances are the contributor's money held for their benefit, never the publisher's float. Where a contributor calls in a balance below the threshold outside those ordinary payout events, the actual, documented third-party transaction cost of that single transfer may be deducted from the payment -- at cost, never more. No such deduction applies to threshold-crossing, scheduled, termination, or reversion payouts: waiting is always free, and exit is never taxed.
Reserves against returns are permitted only for channels with physical return rights, as a named percentage capped at 25% of amounts due, fully released within two statement periods. Print-on-demand and digital channels carry no reserve -- there is nothing to return. Thresholds and reserves are distinct: a reserve delays part of what is due; a threshold only batches the transfer of what is due.
In plain words. Your money comes with the statement. Very small balances can wait until they are worth transferring -- but they stay on the books, you can call them in at any time, and they are always paid out in full when the contract ends. If you do call in a tiny balance early, the bank's actual transfer fee comes off it -- nothing more; waiting costs you nothing. If your publisher holds back a cushion against bookshop returns, it must be a stated percentage, capped, and released on schedule -- and for print-on-demand and e-books there is no cushion at all, because nothing comes back.
Element 4 -- Limited rights, named scope, real term
The grant is enumerated: the contributor keeps copyright and every right not expressly granted. Territory and languages are named. The grant covers only exploitation forms known and named at signing; new forms -- expressly including AI uses -- require a separate addendum. Renewals are express, never automatic. Exclusive grants run at most 10 years, or may run to the full term of copyright only if paired with Element 5's reversion mechanics in full.
In plain words. You keep everything you do not explicitly hand over. The contract says exactly which rights, where, in which languages, and for how long. Nothing you sign today quietly covers uses nobody has invented yet. And no grant is forever-with-no-exit: either it is time-limited, or you hold a real, defined way to take your rights back.
Element 5 -- Exploitation obligation and revenue-defined reversion
Every acquired right carries an obligation to use it: use it or lose it. Under-exploitation is defined by revenue, never availability -- a listing that sells nothing is not exploitation. After an initial window of 3 full years from first publication, if the contributor's entitlements fall below the contract's named threshold (default where none is named: the entitlement equivalent of 50 copies per year) in two consecutive statement years, the contributor may serve 3 months' notice; uncured, the relevant rights revert automatically and without penalty. Subsidiary and foreign rights unexercised for 3 years revert automatically. For these thresholds, one copy-equivalent is one retail sale of any edition at any price; bundle and subscription income converts at the work's average per-unit entitlement for the period.
Collective works. Reversion operates on rights, never on the product -- and the engagement never re-opens the completed work. For a work of two or more contributors (within CIRCULAR, always -- the frame's Contributors): (a) an individual contributor's reversion never requires the alteration, redesign, or withdrawal of the published edition -- the edition endures, including its continued manufacture where production is on demand, and every share, including the reverting contributor's, continues to flow from it; withdrawing the product is a decision only all of the work's contributors can take together; (b) the completed work is exploited as delivered, in the granted forms, or not at all: the engagement contains no mechanism by which anyone -- publisher or contributor -- may require the work to be revised, recomposed, or partially re-used, so no reversion ever opens the questions of who reworks a finished work, who pays for the reworking, or who judges the result; (c) any product beyond the standing edition -- a revised edition, a new composition, a new use -- is the matter of a new contract, freely entered by all whose contributions it uses; after a reversion the publisher no longer holds the reverted rights, so no such product proceeds without the reverting contributor at the table; (d) what a reverting contributor may do elsewhere with regained rights follows the nature of the contribution: a separable contribution may be republished, re-licensed, or built upon independently; rights in an inseparable work are exercised elsewhere only jointly with the co-contributors, as the nature of joint work requires; (e) the work's contributors together may revert the whole work, by the same decision rule under which it was licensed to the publisher, and may then also withdraw the product and end the edition; (f) the reversion trigger is measured on the work -- once met, any contributor may invoke it; (g) a contributor's reversion, or the prospect of one, may never disadvantage the work or its remaining contributors in the publisher's treatment of either. The line runs between products, not printings: a copy of the standing edition produced on demand after a reversion is the past product, not a new use.
In plain words. A publisher who takes a right must actually use it. "Your book is still available" does not count if it is not selling: what counts is whether it is earning you at least a small, stated amount. If it earns less than that for two years running, you can give notice and take your rights back, free. Rights the publisher took but never used -- a translation right, a foreign edition -- come back to you by themselves after three years. And because a CIRCULAR work is never made by one person alone: taking your rights back frees your own future -- it never pulls the published book off the market. The book is a product you all made together: it stays available, print-on-demand keeps printing it, and everyone's share keeps flowing, including yours; it is withdrawn only if all of you decide that together. What you take back are your underlying rights -- if your part can stand alone (a translation, the pictures, a chapter), you may take it elsewhere; if the work is woven too tightly to split, you take them elsewhere only together with the others. And a finished work is never re-opened under the old contract: nobody can demand it be reworked -- not the publisher, and not a single contributor either. If everyone wants a new version or a new use one day, that is a new agreement, freely made by all of you.
Element 6 -- AI: consent, compensation, disclosure
(a) Reservation by default. No right to use the work for training or developing AI models passes unless granted expressly, separately, and against specific compensation. AI training is not publishing. (b) Author-majority splits. Of AI-licensing income, the author's share is at least 75% for training-class and model-development uses, and at least 50% for permissioned retrieval-class uses. AI-licensing income is non-recoupable, is not applied against advances, and passes through within 60 days of the publisher's receipt. (c) No silent substitution. The publisher does not have the work narrated, translated, or given cover or interior art, or substantively edited, by AI in place of a contracted human role without the affected contributor's prior express written consent; spell-check-class assistive tools are not substitution. (d) Disclosure. The publisher discloses to the contributor every AI licence covering their work. (e) Attribution integrity. No AI-generated content is published under a contributor's name without their consent.
In plain words. Nobody may feed your work to an AI system without asking you, paying you, and putting it in writing -- and if such a deal is made, most of that money is yours, on top of everything else, quickly. Nobody may replace your narrator, your translator, your illustrator, or you, with an AI, without written consent. You are told about every AI deal that touches your work. And nothing a machine wrote is ever published under your name without your say-so.
Element 7 -- Unwaivable character, adjustment, credit, non-retaliation
(a) The floor is unwaivable and derogable only upward: house terms may always exceed it; a term below it has no place in a certified engagement. (b) Adjustment: where agreed remuneration proves disproportionately low against the work's subsequent success, the contributor may require good-faith renegotiation; unresolved disputes go to external dispute resolution, not to the Democracy School. Share-based engagements satisfy this continuously by construction -- proportional participation is the adjustment. (c) Credit: every credited creative contributor is credited on all uses, including licensed and derived uses; the contract never demands waiver of moral rights, including where local law would permit it. (d) Non-retaliation: invoking a right under this floor is protected conduct; retaliation, including blacklisting, is conduct relevant to the publisher's certification.
In plain words. These protections cannot be signed away -- a contract can only ever give you more, never less. If the work becomes a success out of all proportion to what you were paid, you can reopen the money conversation, and someone independent decides if you cannot agree. Your name goes on your work, everywhere it travels. And using these rights can never be held against you: a publisher who punishes a contributor for asking is answering to the Standard.
Module D -- The Headline Block
Every certified publisher's published terms open with a standardized block displaying the floor's named values for that house: the base (a, b, or c -- with the deduction schedule where net-defined); statement frequency and payment period; the de-minimis threshold; reserve terms; grant term or reversion mechanics; the reversion threshold; the promotional-copy allowance; the adjustment, credit, and AI commitments with their splits. The block is rendered from declared values, in the Standard's fixed order, so that any two publishers' terms can be read side by side. It is a label, not a score: nothing ranks, weights, or grades the values -- exceeding the floor is simply visible.
In plain words. The first thing you see of any certified publisher's terms is the same one-page grid, in the same order, with their actual numbers in it. You can put two publishers next to each other and see the difference for yourself. Nobody scores them; you can read.
Module E -- Certification, the Mark, and Its Use
E1. Certification. A publisher seeking certification publishes its terms (with the headline block) on its CIRCULAR publisher profile and applies to the Democracy School. Certification is a human assessment by the School that the published terms meet the floor. It is never a veto over any engagement, never a ranking, and never legal advice. Declared values are checked mechanically for presence and floor-conformity; judgement remains human
E2. Breach, cure, and consequences. On notice of non-conformity, the publisher has 3 months to cure. Uncured, certification lapses; the mark is withdrawn until conformity is restored. Within CIRCULAR, publisher standing is conditional on current certification: on lapse, the condition operates of itself -- the publisher's profile loses its publisher standing and is excluded from CIRCULAR's publisher layer, and it can source no frame and enter no new engagement until re-certified. In every certified engagement, lapse gives the frame's Contributors the right, at their election, to terminate the engagement with immediate effect: on termination, all granted rights revert without penalty, and every accrued entitlement -- carried balances included -- falls due at once, free of any threshold. Works under extended application keep their contracts -- the Standard does not dissolve engagements beyond its reach -- but the mark comes off every work and all of the publisher's materials until conformity is restored. Re-certification remains open on cure: the door closes on the breach, not on the publisher. The School adjudicates nothing between the parties to an engagement -- disputes go to external dispute resolution. Loss of access, not damages, is the Standard's only sanction.
E3. The mark. The full name of the standard is CIRCULAR Fair Publishing Standard. Certified publishers may carry the short form -- CIRCULAR Fair Publishing -- at their election on any work, within or beyond CIRCULAR, whose contracts meet the floor, for as long as their certification is current. The mark is defined as name and logo together: the designed kitemark (logotype, typeface, and reproduction rules, annexed to this Standard when the assets are finalized) is reproduced faithfully, never redrawn, retypeset, or recoloured. One mark, one grade: there is no higher badge, and no use of the mark may imply endorsement of a work's content, only of its contract.
In plain words. The badge on a book means one thing: the people who made it were contracted at or above this floor. It does not mean the network vouches for the book, and there is no gold version -- a publisher who does better than the floor shows it in their numbers, not in a shinier badge. And the floor has teeth: a publisher who breaks it and will not mend it within three months loses the badge, loses the ability to publish through CIRCULAR, and every affected group of Contributors may walk away on the spot -- taking their rights and every cent owed with them. Outside CIRCULAR their contracts stand, but the badge comes off everywhere. Mend the breach, and the way back is open.
Module F -- The Living Standard
The Standard is a versioned document published by the Democracy School -- on its own site, and on its CIRCULAR profile from the network's launch. Revisions are made by the School as versioned releases, apply prospectively to engagements entered after release, and never rewrite existing contracts mid-term. Criteria and their revision remain with the School; contributor and creator-organisation input is invited; publishers are consulted individually and advisorily -- never as a body that co-decides, so that the Standard remains one house's published condition of access and never becomes an agreement among publishers. Every element of this Standard, including the mark rules and this module, can be improved by ordinary revision.
In plain words. The Standard is a living document with a version number, like the app it travels with. When it improves, the improvement applies to new contracts from that day on -- nothing changes under your feet mid-contract, and nothing here is frozen forever.
Module G -- The Companion Tool
The School publishes a companion accounting tool -- the calculator -- that encodes this Standard: per-work ledgers for streams, schedules, and bases; entitlement and recoupment tracking under the grammar's rules; reserve and threshold timers; and one-click generation of Element-2 statements and headline-block values. It is distributed through the app's ordinary signed update channel, versions in step with the Standard, and runs entirely on the publisher's own machine, offline: no business data ever leaves the publisher. Its use is offered, never required -- certification never depends on it.
In plain words. If you are a small publisher worried that all this bookkeeping is beyond your means: there is a free tool that does it for you, on your own computer, producing the statements and the label automatically. Using it is your choice; it exists so that fairness is never priced out of reach.
House Modules
Under Development
H-DSP -- Democracy School Press house terms (stub). Remit: Science (natural and social), Technology, and the Humanities, including History and Law. Carries the core floor unchanged; adds the house's scholarly conventions, editorial method, and production approach. To be drafted; nothing in a house module may sit below the floor.
H-RF -- re:frame house terms (stub). Remit: the arts and culture. Carries the core floor unchanged; adds the house's practice-led, adaptive method and its greater creative licence -- a property of form and method, never of treatment: "radical" never loosens the floor. To be drafted; same rule.
Note on labels. DSP and re:frame are publishing perspectives, not classifications: a work is routed by which perspective serves it, chosen in dialogue, never by classifying its author. Because practitioners cross labels, everything that matters to a person lives in the core: the label changes the workshop, never the floor. Co-badged works remain an open possibility on this architecture.
Note on labels. DSP and re:frame are publishing perspectives, not classifications: a work is routed by which perspective serves it, chosen in dialogue, never by classifying its author. Because practitioners cross labels, everything that matters to a person lives in the core: the label changes the workshop, never the floor. Co-badged works remain an open possibility on this architecture.
