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This one should harden everyone.My wife was a vice-president at a medical school/research center, and one day a few years ago she casually informed me she'd dropped my name as a possible vendor to head up the book project they wanted for their 40th-anniversary celebration.The whole thing started out screwy, with the head of the purchasing department beating me up right and left to pare down the bid. They'd sent me a 5½ × 8½ mostly-text book as an example of what they wanted. I was to provide writing and editorial services and be in overall charge of the project, working with a committee of a dozen distinguished members of the faculty.I had bid a bargain rate of just over $30,000 for what was to be a 9-month part-time project. She worked me down under $20,000 by saying they could handle this and that. When I pointed out that the this and that they were promising to handle on their own made little sense, she said not to worry that we could redo the bid as necessary if that proved the case. I pointed out that there was no provision for project mapping and that I should add something for that. Oh, no, she countered, the committee has the project firmly in mind. Can I see what they have in mind, I inquired, for purposes of making the bid more accurate? Yes, when you win the bid and meet with them.I decided that perhaps she was just trying to make sure I won the bid, perhaps as a favor to my wife, plus obviously book projects were not the sort of thing she ordinarily purchased, so she was just having difficulty wrapping her mind around it.I won the bid and met with the committee. They had an idea what they wanted alright, a large-format coffee-table book lavishly illustrated. (I found out toward the end of the entire project two and a half years later that they’d early-on produced a memo to this effect, one that had not been included or even reflected in the bid.) However, they did not know what they wanted in it. We worked that out in painstaking detail over the course of nine months.When I pointed out they were talking about a project that was five times the scale of what I’d bid on and that we’d spent nine months on mapping, a task that I could not even bill for, they urged me on. Damn the expense. They’d find the money whatever it took.My instinct yelled at me to sit down and redo the contract between us to reflect the new reality, but I assured myself that an oral contract would do in this case as how do you find more honorable men than medical school faculty? I buckled down and did the project. Besides, I’d been clever and added a per-month minimum payment to the bid of $1000, so I could expect a meaningful portion of my efforts to be covered. Unfortunately, all other payment was linked to billable events toward the end of the project.A year and a half later, I turned in the completed work on schedule. The president was livid. “Why is it not typeset?” That was not part of the bid. You said you would handle that. “It’s terribly written and needs lots of revision.” (It was obvious he hadn’t even read it.)And so the Senior VP for Community Engagement huddled with me to see what could be done to salvage the project, only I wasn’t buying into their panic. I’d delivered every deliverable on schedule and in great shape. I had plenty of memos apprising them that they were derelict in getting their end done.And so when he asked me to take the tasks on myself, I calculated up the remainder as another $26,000. He thanked me and said he’d get an RFP together. I started working on a rush basis to complete the project.At one point, I asked the Senior VP where the new contract stood. He produced it out of his desk drawer saying he had to get one paragraph changed and should have it in a few days. A few days later, he sent it to me for me to sign.Meanwhile, I was waiting for payment on the final items of the original contract. Soon, the book was ready to go to the printer, but I was still awaiting payment. Finally, I demanded payment at which point I was informed I had been paid in full. What about the second contract? We never signed it.I came to find out that they’d allotted $20,000 as a budget for the editorial end of the project and had worked me to get me under that number and then worked me to keep me limited to that number even fraudulently offering me a second contract with no intent to follow through. I’d essentially been paid over the course of the contract for the thousand dollars a month I had thought would help prevent the project running overly long. I was not getting paid for most of the actual deliverables. I had even paid $4000 for the indexing out of my own pocket.“Well, the contract did not assign the copyright to you, and you can’t publish it.” That bit of news threw them for a loop. I hired an attorney and began looking into suits on both the contract issues and copyright issues.I could sue in federal court to enforce my copyright, but it was murky. Plus, it would cost me $20,000 minimum and I’d be limited to suing for damages, which, on a limited-run book, would not even return my costs. And I could sue the State of Texas, but the State of Texas has an item in the law that says, “A contract shall be a contract.” Okay, so what? I had plenty of oral assurances of getting paid for the increased scope of the contract and the promise of a second contract. Well, elsewhere in the law, there’s a definition, “A contract shall mean a written contract.” What that means is whatever the dollar number stated, that is the limit of the state's liability.And so I sued Texas and had to fight it out with Greg Abbott, now governor of the state. I asked my attorney why the state’s attorney general wanted to be involved in my little case. It seemed that I had a chance of winning, and the state could not afford the precedent of their “a contract is a contract” rule being compromised in the least. His presence in court would make sure I did not prevail.And I didn’t. And six months later, the med school published the book anyway. Only, the president, chagrinned that he could not find fault with my writing, had hired a copyeditor to go over the whole book, a newspaper copyeditor. The whole book was absurdly changed from book style to newspaper style. Further, the final page alignment adjustments for press make-ready were never completed. The thing was published with my name on it as editorial director in a form that I would never want to represent as my own work. After all that work, I wouldn’t even be proud to show it.About a year later, the school’s president was unceremoniously fired. The Senior VP retired about that time. Prior to being fired, the president had hired someone over my wife for the express purpose of vindictively firing her. To the new guy’s credit, he didn’t feel it merited, and he delayed until the president’s head being on the chopping block made it a moot point.But these gentlemen, together with the head of purchasing had conspired to steal almost two years of my life. As for the distinguished faculty committee and their assurances, when the shit hit the fan, they took low profiles.To that point in my life, I’d been willing to operate on trust in large part. Now my rule, and I hope yours too, get it in writing up front, and get any additional promises in writing as they arise.