You're primarily interested in exposure for your work, but you need a distributor—often a commercial entity like a publishing company. Even if you don't expect your work to generate revenue (for you), you may want to make sure you can “recycle” your work in revised or updated versions, or to make nonprofit educational uses of your work. Academics usually fall into this category, as do many independent consultants and others who create works but do not expect to profit from them. These creators often use professional intermediaries, such as journal publishers, to distribute their works because the intermediary’s intervention confers credibility and/or prestige.
In this area, however, many businesses present creators with contracts that convey most or all of the creator’s rights. Ironically, for example, sometimes a not-for-profit publisher’s initial position is even more demanding than a commercial publisher’s. (The Contracts section of this website contains examples of such overreaching contracts.) The publishers or other businesses may assume that the author is eager to get published or distributed, and doesn’t know any better than to assent to whatever the contract demands, especially if the author is an academic or inexperienced.
If you’re in this group of creators it is important to understand the bargaining power you have—even if you don’t realize you have it. The distributors want your work, and aren’t paying you for it, so you may have much more leverage than you realize to hold on to your copyrights.
