Today I read the post from University of Michigan’s Associate University Librarian for Publishing, John Wilkin, about University of Michigan Press’ new author’s agreement. This type of an agreement is an enormous step in the right direction and I hope that more publishers move towards similar changes. As a librarian and scholar, I am not only interested in educating others about retaining their rights as authors, but have recently entered into these discussions myself as an author. It always seems easier when you’re on the other side explaining it to someone else, but once you are the author and have to negotiate with a publisher, it can get tricky. How do you explain to a traditional publisher that you want to not only retain your copyright so that you can re-use your content, deposit it in an institutional repository or (like me) add a digital project that would precede your printed edition, which would of course be under a creative commons license? UMPress is proposing four changes related to retention of author’s copyright, institutional repository deposit, adoption of creative commons license, and commitment to archiving. I hope that other publishers will soon follow UMPress’ path and consider these as serious options for their authors.