strategies

I mentioned last week that part of effective negotiation is finding and proposing a middle position both parties can accept. Today we look more closely at how that’s done. Pretend that a publisher offers you 10% royalties on hardback sales (gross royalties on domestic sales) of your book. You, the author, would prefer a higher percentage, but you know that this number is close to industry standard. How do you meet in the middle? You might ask if the publisher would consider escalating royalties at different sales levels. For example, 10% on the first 5,000 copies, 12% on sales 5,001-10,000,