Contracts are not sexy. I taught a course on publishing contracts at The Loft Literary Center recently--a long-held dream come true--and one of the first things I told my students is that contracts are not sexy. It's easy to glamorize the publishing industry and the life of a writer. It can seem like an endless swirl of cover reveals and starred reviews and book tours. Even the difficult parts can be romanticized: the struggle to put words on the page, to find an agent, to land a deal.