“everything is Negotiable.” Not!

Many though not all aspects of a contract are negotiable.  Knowing what is and what isn’t negotiable, and when to walk away, can increase your earnings immensely.

If you’re selling a timely article to a newspaper, the editor seldom has time or patience for negotiation.  But you could ask more for a sidebar or a photo.

If you’ve just sold a short story to Playboy and the dollars offered are a good deal less than in your fantasies, don’t even think about negotiating.  But you can and should negotiate a kill fee (if one is not already present in the proffered contract).  A kill fee (payable if they don’t publish your efforts after all) is always a test of how sincere a publisher’s intentions are.  You can and should try to negotiate one.

With book contracts, the base rate for royalties is seldom negotiable, but you could ask for set up a sliding scale with author’s royalties set at a higher percentage as the number of copies sold increases.  (If you book sells like one of Steven King’s, you should expect to get paid like Steven King.)

On the other hand, it’s essential that you know when to walk away as well as when to play the game.

A contract, a prospective “literary agent” sent you, calls for you to reimburse them for “legitimate office expenses.”  Walk away.  They ain’t a legitimate agent.

I was thrilled to death when Publish America agreed to publish my novel.  The thrills continued when I negotiated increased royalties!  But our negotiations ended when I found they were unwilling to supply additional author’s copies.  (Just two?  My other publishers were giving me five to ten.) 

Author’s copies are essential for promotional purposes.  Yes, you can give one to your Mother.  But your father, your best friend, and your favorite uncle will just have to wait.  Tom Clancy is the household name he is today because of all the copies of his first novel he gave away to reviewers.

If Publish America wasn’t going to promote my book and they weren’t going to give me any author’s copies so I could promote it, what were they going to do?  They were going to print my book on demand and “sell” me as many copies as they possibly could.  I’d be self-publishing in other words.  I walked away.

To publicize my as-yet-to-be-sold children’s book,  “Inside the Human Cell,” I considered an offer to buy the opening chapter from Jack and Jill, a mass-circulation children’s magazine.  They offered a decent fee and the exposure would certainly increase the likelihood of a major publisher bidding on the book.  The catch was that Jack and Jill insisted on acquiring the copyright to my article, which meant I couldn’t use it in the book.  The book remains unsold to this day, but I am free to continue shopping it, or even to publish it myself, because I’ve retained all my rights.

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