Speaker 1: Welcome back to the bookends YouTube channel. I'm James McGowan. Hi, I'm Jessica Fast. We are literary agents who have taken our popular blog to YouTube to discuss all things publishing. Believe it or not, this is a very highly requested video. We get it quite a bit. Just more insight on how agents negotiate our book deals and perhaps more specifically, when an agent knows they're

Speaker 2: done negotiating a book deal. We get this a lot because it's a hard one. It's really not hard, but it's not hard. It's just, um, it's a lot of talking. Kind of what we do here. From two people who have a YouTube channel, a lot of talking is hard for us. Nobody's going to believe that.

Speaker 1: I mean, I have to be honest with the people. Um, okay, so let's, let's start from the beginning, right? There are two things that an agent is really responsible for negotiating for every book deal. That is your initial offer, which is when the publisher's like, Hey, yes, we want to publish this. Here's what we're going to pay you. Here's when all the terms that we're going to publish. And then the basic deal points. And then the second thing is all the legalese, the contract, the full word document, all the words that you have to read before you sign the thing. That's the second thing we negotiate. I want to a lot. It is a lot. Um, we're not going to get into the nitty gritty of what those details are and what agents look out for, because frankly, that's what you need an agent for. And that's a lot to discuss, but what we are going to talk about is sort of how an agent will approach each negotiation. So, and when we are done, right. And I think, so what we've done is sort of broken down our mindset, right. Into three little categories every time we get in a negotiation. And I think that these apply to both offer stages, contract stages, and also second rounds of negotiations, right? Like after you send the counter, I think this is the same three principles that we apply to everything. Each time we're like, how do I respond to this negotiation email?

Speaker 2: Yeah. And what James means by second round is it's not as simple as, Hey, James, here's my offer. Okay. We want this. Okay. We're done. Sometimes it's, we want this. Okay. Can you get this? Okay. We want this. Okay. If we can't get that, can we get this? There's some back and forth. And keep in mind in all of this conversation that every agent, every personality, every situation is really different. So don't say to your agent, well, James and Jessica said it has to be done this way because it doesn't. This is just sort of an example of how it might be done

Speaker 1: in a situation. The same way writers have a style, agents have a negotiation style. Yeah, exactly. So the three things that an agent is going, is processing in their brain every time they're discussing an offer are number one starting point. Some people call it an anchor, like an offer anchor or a deal anchor, really where we start is going to, by some metric, tell us where we're going to end, right? If you get a $5,000 offer, I'm sorry, pal, by no means necessary, you walking away with a hundred thousand dollars from that same publisher. It's highly unlikely.

Speaker 2: Highly unlikely, unless another publisher has very different vision for the book.

Speaker 1: Let's not assume this is an auction situation. Right, right. This is just a straightforward negotiation. The starting point really does matter, right? So it's not logical to say, all right, well, you offered us 5,000, but now let's give us a hundred thousand. It's just an irrational counter-argument. You'll get laughed out of the room, right? Don't let your agent do that. No, it's crazy. It's not smart. But really, so what is the offer? What is the detail, the contract language, whatever you're thinking at present? Where did the publisher start?

Speaker 2: What I want to add to that is I know immediately so many of our viewers are going to go, okay, well then what would be the logical next step about $5,000? And I know you're going to go into it a little bit, but again, it's so dependent. It's genre dependent. It's editor dependent. It's house dependent. It's situational. So I can't tell you what your agent should be asking for from that starting point, and I'm not about to.

Speaker 1: No, but also a discussion with your agent about it. There should be discussions in the negotiation phase about what they're planning to do. And you can maybe even offer your own thoughts and questions and have an honest conversation. This is not the time to mince words. Be as honest as possible. But when you get that language or that deal point, what is it at present? What needs to be improved in it and how can it be improved?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So the typical terms in these initial deal points are the advance, the royalty terms, the rights terms and the territory. So does the publisher want world rights? They want the right to sell the book throughout the world. Do they just want English language rights? That's the term. Are those it? Advance, royalties, the term. And then what rights would also include in that would be, do they want translation rights? Do they want audio rights is a big one. Sometimes option language will come into that, but not always. It depends.

Speaker 1: It really depends on the publisher and how they do things.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And also the type of book. I think a picture book deal point is very different than a mass market adult paperback.

Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Yep. But then another thing that we are considering right at the start is, okay, really, where would we like to see it go and what can we agree and compromise on, right? From the very beginning, we have these thoughts of this is where I need to see it go in order to be like, yeah, this is a good deal for you. You should accept that. Yeah. So starting point, that's where we are starting point and really some conception of the ending point. The next thing that we are considering is industry standard. So like Jessica said, depending on the genre of the book, the publisher, there are standards that an author should receive, particularly in royalty rates, what rights we get to retain. So in most cases, an author will keep performance rights. Is that something that's been offered in this offer? What is the standard for an author to accept?

Speaker 2: Yeah. And assuming the agent does a lot in that genre, that age group, they would know that.

Speaker 1: Right. And that is part of when we get that starting point, we're comparing it to industry standard. So we're seeing how can our negotiations get us closer to industry standard.

Speaker 2: And these are all conversations that you should be having with your agent at this point. You don't have to have it prior to this necessarily, but at this point that the deal comes in, you should let the agent know what may or may not make you happy in terms of the initial deal points. And your agent should also explain to you what the industry standard is. Is this matching expectations? Is this below expectations? Is this what the agent expected? Is the agent surprised by this in either direction? Because we've definitely been happy surprised many times.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I love being happy surprised. When you get an offer, they're just like, that's not what I expected. This is fantastic. And that's only up from there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But we also, we know what each publisher, we are working with most of these publishers on a regular basis. There are the exceptions where this is a new publisher that we've sold to or what have you, but we know what they typically offer, right? You, in most cases have language boiler plates for contracts. A boiler plate is, you know, language that we've agreed to that is then applied as our standard for future contracts. We have those, so we know sort of what to expect, which kind of leads us to the third point of precedent. What have we received from this publisher or imprint or editor before? And how can we use that information to help negotiate in this

Speaker 2: particular deal? And while that can come into play with advance, the advance tends to be more book specific. This is usually comes into play when we're talking about contract terms and the more nitty gritty of the deal, where if a publisher is really arguing with us, or we're arguing with the publisher or arguing against each other, where we can sort of call up and say, well, in the past, you've given us this. And that's something we definitely work together as an agency, not just as individuals that works as for all of bookends. Right, exactly. And that's one of

Speaker 1: the best things about working with an agency is for an agent and an author, like having an agency that is, you know, successful means that they're successful for a reason. Yeah. So every time we get, like we said, every time we get an offer, or we are starting negotiations, we are considering these three things to develop our initial counter negotiation counter, just a counter counter offer. There you go. But then with each counter from that publisher, we're sort of rethinking that and re-evaluating where we're at and what, you know, with conversations with our clients, what they're willing to accept and how they're willing to move forward. Yeah. And there is no sort of,

Speaker 2: we go three times and then it's over. We go four times and then it's over. You know, sometimes we go back once and then it's over, you know, and again, all of these things come into play, as well as, you know, the more experienced the author is and the more contracts we have, the faster things can go because we are negotiating based on a previous contract. So usually the publisher will offer many of the same terms. So that sort of upfront deal point doesn't change as much. How we go back is really important. And, you know, and some of this is again, sort of experience and knowledge where we know sometimes when we're asking for things that might be a reach because we know what this publisher usually does. We also know when we can go back maybe a second time on something or when it's like, okay, we know that's honestly the best we're able to get on that. So sometimes there are other things you'll go back and forth about. And sometimes you will have a big fight on something. Usually in my experience, the big fight fights come from the contract itself. When you're really discussing the minutiae of the language is when I think we

Speaker 1: put our foot down the loudest. Well, and there are also times, like you said, where just a publisher can't or won't budge on a certain point or a certain phrasing. And really, like you said in the beginning, it's all situational. It really does come down to what we're willing to accept for any certain book, what an author is willing to accept and really how that would then impact

Speaker 2: a career. And I think it's really important to know that it's not about winning or losing. It's about getting the best deal for you as we can. And a lot of this knowledge comes into that. But because we ask for something and the publisher doesn't give it to us doesn't mean we lost something. You know, there's a balance there of things we can get and things we can't

Speaker 1: and how we work those conversations. And what that looks like for every author is different.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And one of the things I want to add, because I don't know that people know this, and it just came to me, the initial deal points that we get come from the editor. So the editor we submitted to, the editor that you as the author are going to be working directly with, is the one who comes back to us and says, here's your offer. Here's what I can offer. Now, the reason I say here's what I can offer is because typically the editor is not the one making the final decisions on this. They are working with their team and the powers that be and whoever it is they need to get permission from to make this offer. And a lot of times the process can be slow because if we counter with something that person needs to go back and talk to their team to see what they can come back to us with. And we tend not to immediately answer either. We want to go back to our team and compare notes and think about how we want to go back to them. So it does take some time and that's all good time because what it means is the editor is fighting for you on their side. We're fighting for you on our side. It's all very pleasant. There's actually no fighting. Sometimes there's even joking, but at the end of the day, we're all trying to do our best to get you the best deal. Even the editor is doing that. Once those initial deal points are agreed to, that deal memo is sent from the editor to the publisher's contracts department who then prepares the contract. Even if we have a boilerplate, those contracts, especially in 2021 and 2020 and seemingly beyond, are taking forever. It does not mean that the publisher is going to back out of your deal. It just means it takes forever. And the contracts person doesn't have the same passion or commitment that the editor does. And they are working on an entire

Speaker 1: imprint's worth of contracts. They're often not as many of them as there should be.

Speaker 2: Often or always. Always. So when we get that contract, now the person we're talking to is that person in the contracts department. And they're coming from a very different place. They're coming into that negotiation from this is what we do as a legal, you know, our legal boilerplate within our company is this is what we're allowed to do and this is what we're not allowed to do. And we negotiate based on that. Right. So it's a totally different group of people and it's a different system. And the contracts, once we have the contract, that can take a long time. I mean, these contracts can be 15, 20 some pages long. Some of them are like 36. Right. So we need to read through them and take our notes. And that's not something I can do, you know, in between filming YouTube videos. I need the time to really be able to focus and get that done. Get my notes back to the contracts department. I'm going in a queue behind all the other agents who've already done this and waiting for that person to review my notes and our boilerplate and get back to me. It's a three to four month process right now. That's three to four months. Easily. Sometimes it's three months just to get the first

Speaker 1: draft of the contract. Yeah. Oh, I meant three to four months. Once you get it in a lot of cases,

Speaker 2: especially in a kid lit. Yeah. Yeah. So just perspective on what we do and how we do it. And then I guess, did we answer the question of when, do we know when we're done?

Speaker 1: We know when we're done, when we've, when we have gotten to that point where a publisher's like, this is it, or we get what we want or we can't do that. And then we have those conversations with our author and we discuss compromise and we discuss what we're willing to agree to. And really again, a different, you know, it's a different goal posts for every author and every book deal.

Speaker 2: So, and I think what we should say in all of this is in our experiences, most of the time, wherever it ends up, the authors are happy. Yeah. It's not one of those, you know, I think sometimes the way we talk about it makes it sound like the authors are always going to settle for something they're not happy with. And I don't think that at the end of the day, that's typically the

Speaker 1: experience. It can be some of the things that we are negotiating. Like we have all had experience when we're negotiating something or authors like, yeah, I don't care. I'm like, okay, but I care. There are times when the author's like, okay, that's important. So there are going to be things where the author is just like, okay, well that was done. I don't realize what was done for me, but I appreciate it. And I'm excited. Let's get started. So yes, just trust the process. Really trust. Hopefully you have trust in your agent. We know that this was a big video, so bookmark it, watch it a second time, let it sink in. But let us know if you have any questions and we hope to

Speaker 2: see you back here next time. And this was way more fun to make than I thought it was going to be. I know. I knew you would like it by the end of it. So thank you for the question viewer. Yep. All

Speaker 1: right. Don't forget to like, and subscribe. See you next week. Bye.