Okay, contract mavens, please explain "first X" rights to me. Or, more precisely, explain them better. I ask because someone wants one of my stories, but the rights they want confuse me.

First, yay.

Second, having done something first, haven't you pretty much done it first forever?

This is that Cloaked in Shadow thing, in which the guidelines said they wanted first world rights in English in perpetuity.

This has apparently confused enough people that the contract they sent me calls for "First Anthology" and "First Electronic (Online for the purpose of promotion)" rights to the work in English throughout the world for five years.

The way I thought I understood "first anything" rights, putting a duration on them is meaningless. Once we sign and they pay me, they've bought the rights to be the first ones to publish my story. Indeed the contract reverts everything to me if they haven't done so in twelve months.

But once they publish it, assuming I haven't cheated them by letting someone else publish it in the meantime, they have now published it first. That's all I ever promised them, and have a nice day. I can now do anything I want with the story - resell it to another anthology or a magazine, read it on television, whatever.

Putting a duration on that doesn't mean anything. They can only publish it first once. All a duration would do is set a time during which they must exercise their right of first publication or lose it. And indeed the contract specifically does this elsewhere, with that 12 month clause. Thus, we would appear to have a different understanding of what First Anthology rights mean.

I've seen a reply from the publisher to another author saying he isn't trying to keep you from selling it to a reprint collection or anything. The project is going to be a print on demand volume, and, from his response, he seems to think he needs this in order to be able to continue printing copies of the book for any future buyers - or now for buyers in the next five years, after which I guess he assumes no one's going to want it anymore.

I don't get it. Anyone?