Quote Originally Posted by TimPaul View Post
I always get a contract, or an email agreement of some sort. It spells out the terms of the licensing and usage of the map...
Yeah, thanks, that's what I've been doing, just spelling out the important stuff in email exchanges. But in the end, that's "just" an email, not a legal document.

As for registering the copyright, that seems like overkill when it costs so much (US $55 minimum), so I haven't done that yet. My gut feeling has always been that I don't expect to have any further use for a map I create for a game or novel, and it takes the same amount of time to create it whether I retain the copyright or include it with the finished map, so I'm surprised at the people who charge so much extra for the copyrights to a map.

Twice I've read a manuscript before making a map, but only because I really wanted to read the story, not because I felt I needed to. In one case, I did uncover some inconsistencies in the story when I compared it to the sketch map I had been given (points A, B, and C were in a line, and the story stated that the characters would stop off at point C on their way from A to B. The locations were rearranged on the map to be A, C, B).

Still another time I was asked to read a 500+ page story and invent the map from the story. For that, I asked extra money, and in the end lost the commission (but the person who got it did a far better job with that particular map than I could have anyway, so it was ok).

I actually love working with the clients to create the world. Most of the time they have certain things that have to be in place, but I often add or suggest additional stuff for added flavor, and it's always appreciated and usually used.