Sure. So what?

In what possible way does the same author writing ‘X for Dummies’ and ‘The complete idiot’s guide to X’ harm either publisher (assuming no copyright violation is involved)? The competing book is going to be written no matter what.

About the only way that you can construe harm is in terms of time-to-market, and all you need is a time-limited non-compete to dispose of that concern.

You would have to make the argument that a particular author was uniquely qualified to write a book addressing some topic/audience combination and that denying that author to another publisher for that combination is some kind of tactical advantage.

If that’s the case (and there are such rare cases), the publisher ought to be willing to pay for leaving the non-compete in (which doesn’t happen), or at least be willing to bid against each other to get the particular author (which also doesn’t happen).

I’m certainly glad you are coming out against ‘overly broad’ non-competes, but I disagree with where you’re drawing the line.

This is largely the same kind of legal groupthink that gets us ridiculous software EULA and website TOS documents.

What an interesting post this is (and the responses too). As an aspiring writer I found this discussion about the non-compete clause very useful information and I thank you for sharing it.

I went on quite a trip, following the links from your respondents to their web sites, and wrote it up on my blog – my website link takes you directly to the post, ‘The Real Value Of Web 2.0′. I hope you’ll find the time to pop in and have a read.

Best wishes,

Somerset Bob

It was intended to be a simple, direct example. Both of those books are of similar length, will have nearly identical coverage, are intended for the same audience, and take a very similar approach. They are certainly directly competitive, and are likely 2 of the books a reader would consider buying as an entry point to JavaScript.

My point actually was the second part of the example – Pro JavaScript. If a non-compete is written with flexibility it would not unnecessarily hinder an author with expertise in JavaScript to continue writing on the topic. An overly broad non-compete clause might enable to Publisher to cry foul in my example.

Why not? That is probably the worst example you could have chosen. Nobody buys those because of the *author*.

With respect to your JavaScript example we certainly publish our fair share and try to differentiate among them with different series and approaches.

I would not want an author to write JavaScript for Dummies and Complete Idiot’s Guide to JavaScript. However with some flexibility in the non-compete they should be able to write APress’s Pro JavaScript.

Although non-competes of some kind are pretty much standard, they should be negotiable. I much prefer Tim O’Reilly’s position on this. O’Reilly doesn’t have a non-compete in their standard contract. Here’s Tim’s post on the topic:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4118

Fwiw, he brings up an even worse scenario where you might have a non-compete _and_ an option (right of first refusal).