As part of our ongoing mission to create a more diverse Jazz industry, we have been contacting publications, authors and journalists to ask if they would share their top tips and guidance to help new writers. We have been thrilled by the response and are very happy to publish some thoughts from Todd Jenkins, author of Free Jazz and Free Improvisation: An Encyclopedia and I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus

My primary advice would be to evaluate any contract thoroughly to make sure it's as beneficial to the writer as it is to the publisher, and intelligently devised. Before signing, the writer should get a definitive answer as to the pay scale, the list price of the book, the format in which it will be published, and the marketing strategy for the book. All of this should be documented in print before the contract is signed. It might also be wise to guarantee that the writer has input about the cover art.

This comes from my own naivete when I signed a book contract at 25. The publisher normally dealt with libraries and research institutes, and they proceeded with my free jazz encyclopedia as they would with any other reference: they needlessly split it into two volumes, making the cataloguing for sale confusing; they set the list price at almost three hundred dollars (roughly £220); and they didn't market it to *any* jazz publications, organizations, or collegiate music departments. Sixteen years after it was published, they still haven't sold out of the original print run. Not knowing anything about free jazz or bothering to ask me, they even put Miles Davis on the front cover. My Mingus book was issued two years later by a different imprint of the same publishing house. The price was more amenable, but they did absolutely no promotion of it even though they were contractually obligated to do so. A year after it came out, Howard Mandel asked me when it was coming out!

The one positive outcome was that it made me much more attentive to the details of a contract, and more proactive about its execution. I hope that advice will be helpful to your writers.