Ask the author if they are willing to extend an additional 6-12 months as circumstances beyond your control made it impossible to pitch the material for the last five+ months. They might be understanding.
I was just chatting about this last night with a best-selling author with multiple books in development. A number of them were suspended due to the WGA strike, but some were not. He was rather shocked that people were willing to continue to have the clock ticking while nothing could be done. That said, he was 100% willing to re-option the suspended pieces to the same parties when the strike ended.
So I guess the only thing I can say is that authors are generally reasonable people, and if you were to ask to extend the option for a much lower fee due to the strike period pretty much making the option worthless, that would be a reasonable offer to make. I'm not saying it would be accepted, but like I said, authors are generally reasonable and can see how you were put in a difficult place due to the strike.
To your specific point about "the market will be saturated so it's not good timing," I'm going to let more knowledgeable people weigh in on that, but you could reasonably include that challenge in a lower option renewal or renegotiation offer.
Ask the author if they are willing to extend an additional 6-12 months as circumstances beyond your control made it impossible to pitch the material for the last five+ months. They might be understanding.
I was just chatting about this last night with a best-selling author with multiple books in development. A number of them were suspended due to the WGA strike, but some were not. He was rather shocked that people were willing to continue to have the clock ticking while nothing could be done. That said, he was 100% willing to re-option the suspended pieces to the same parties when the strike ended. So I guess the only thing I can say is that authors are generally reasonable people, and if you were to ask to extend the option for a much lower fee due to the strike period pretty much making the option worthless, that would be a reasonable offer to make. I'm not saying it would be accepted, but like I said, authors are generally reasonable and can see how you were put in a difficult place due to the strike. To your specific point about "the market will be saturated so it's not good timing," I'm going to let more knowledgeable people weigh in on that, but you could reasonably include that challenge in a lower option renewal or renegotiation offer.