Legal advice on terminating a freelance contract

Questioner

Good day sir/madam, I am hereby emailing you with a request for objective advice regarding a (freelancer) contract with a publisher, which I actually wish to terminate unilaterally on the grounds of very poor communication and the client's failure to meet commitments. Communication with this publisher is extremely difficult and sluggish. So I signed my contract and returned it on June 27th, and I haven't received it back since. Contact has been ongoing since the end of April, and all kinds of expectations have been raised and nice promises have been made (by email), but these have not been fulfilled. In concrete terms this means: I cannot perform any work for this publisher, and I have to wait a long time for responses to my emails. Officially I have not been able to perform any work yet. By the way, I fully understand holidays and unforeseen circumstances, but that too was never communicated to me. All in all, three months have passed, with sluggish communication, nice promises and a contract that still hasn't been returned to me. The last email I received from this publisher was on June 29th, and it's now the end of July! I am very upset about this state of affairs, and the trust in this publisher has decreased considerably, and I actually see hardly any basis for a good cooperation. To be honest, I want to unilaterally terminate the contract. The contract has only been signed by me, and returned to the publisher, but still not returned to me. And we are now more than a month further. And I deeply regret that, because good cooperation depends on mutual trust and good communication. My question to you is: What is wisdom in this matter? What can and may I do or not do? Can I unilaterally terminate this (freelancer) contract based on these facts? Ultimately, this publisher (and prospective client) remains in default. Thanks in advance

Lawyer

I understand that you are frustrated by this state of affairs and to put it mildly it is not fair the way you are being treated. The first question that comes to mind is whether an agreement has been reached now that you have signed the contract and the publisher has not. In addition, even if no contract has been reached, that does not mean that you can unilaterally stop the negotiations. So it is not possible to give a sound judgment without knowing the details of the case, such as the content of the written contract and what exactly has been discussed and agreed upon. In any case, I do not dare to advise you at this time without further information what you should do. If you wish, I am prepared to look into this case further if you provide me with the details.