Rights are frequently transferred with little or no paperwork. Stories, and, often, novels, are sold en masse with at most a letter of agreement between the publisher and the agent. Publishers feel no obligation to notify authors of the publication of their novels or stories. First and foremost, SFWA calls for an end to the practice of allowing agents to sign novel contracts in place of the authors. In today's global community, it is a simple matter for a publisher to FedEx, fax, or e-mail a contract directly to the author for their signature.
Turnaround time is only a few days.
It hardly needs to be said that the author, not a proxy, is the one who is primarily affected by the contract, and should in most cases be the one who signs the contract. Agents should be the contract signatory only in exceptional cases, when the author, for whatever reason, is unavailable. Contracts should be prepared in the author's language whenever possible, but the responsibility for translating the contract must rest with the author. It is clearly more appropriate and legitimate for a publisher to acquire the explicit approval of the author of a work before publishing it. Many American agents already insist that their foreign representatives do it this way.