Prior to signing an agreement with a publisher ensure you have the rights you wish to retain for now and for the future.
Read and understand the proposed agreement. You must know what rights the author retains and what rights the publisher retains.
Consider what you would like to do with all parts of your work both now and in the future.
* Publish your work in a peer-reviewed publication
* Present your work at a conference
* Display a copy of your work in a specific online location: Rose-Hulman Scholar, Rose-Hulman website, or a personal website
* Share a copy of your work with your students: face-to-face class, online class, via a controlled course management system (Moodle), etc.
* Modify your original work and publish your modified work
* Other?
If the proposed agreement does not include the rights you wish to retain, you must notify the publisher of the modifications, have the publisher agree to the modifications, and obtain a fully signed copy of the agreement with the modifications. You can directly e-mail the publisher the modified agreement or author addendum. If the publisher does not agree with your proposed modifications in writing, you can either accept and sign the publisher's agreement or decide not to publish your work with the publisher. You can always try to publish your work with another publisher.
Since you are bound by the agreement you sign, be sure to always keep a copy of your signed agreements. It is extremely unlikely that the publisher will ever modify the signed agreement. Copyright agreements with corporate publishers last 95 years from the year of the work's first publication.