This week's negotiation
This week's negotiation was rather short, but a little different than the rest. We had to tally up a point system based on the outcome of our deal. In this case, I played the role of an upcoming agent who represents one of the best-selling authors in America Paige Turner. My partner played the role of the business associate for the company BestBooks, who wanted to sign a contract with Paige.After handing in our quick prep sheets, we commenced our negotiation.
We started negotiating first on the amount of book clubs that Paige's book would be in and the amount of countries to which the book would be translated and sold in. What threw me off at first, was that my partner asked for exactly what i wanted out of this part of the deal. I was expecting to haggle a bit to get a good deal from these two areas. It did not occur to me until later, that the purpose of this was to have some common ground between my partner that I could use to ease the tension in the negotiation and gain a better deal. Afterwards we negotiated about the money areas that my client would be receiving. My partner actually had a very good tactic of incorporating royalty bonuses that most publishing companies use. We worked out a figure and my client gained 7% royalty on the first 10,000 books and 10% for books sold over 10,000. I felt this was perfect because it had a possibility for high rate of growth, considering my client was a best-selling author. We then negotiated about about contract renewals and duration of the contract. My client wanted to receive the shortest contract possible with the fewest renewal options. Since my client's most important interest was the amount of money he would receive, I argued for a 4year contract duration to be renewed twice in exchange for a much larger signing bonus. My partner agreed. That concluded our negotiation process. We filled out our debrief and headed back to class.
I felt that if I had a better understanding of the case, I could have earned more points. I should have read more outside standards to know what my limitations were and to get more unique ideas to boost my total amount of points. However I was satisfied with the deal as well as the process of negotiation. I remained focus on my clients main interests and fought more for those. In future negotiation, I will do more research and come up with clever methods of gaining the most from the deal.
We started negotiating first on the amount of book clubs that Paige's book would be in and the amount of countries to which the book would be translated and sold in. What threw me off at first, was that my partner asked for exactly what i wanted out of this part of the deal. I was expecting to haggle a bit to get a good deal from these two areas. It did not occur to me until later, that the purpose of this was to have some common ground between my partner that I could use to ease the tension in the negotiation and gain a better deal. Afterwards we negotiated about the money areas that my client would be receiving. My partner actually had a very good tactic of incorporating royalty bonuses that most publishing companies use. We worked out a figure and my client gained 7% royalty on the first 10,000 books and 10% for books sold over 10,000. I felt this was perfect because it had a possibility for high rate of growth, considering my client was a best-selling author. We then negotiated about about contract renewals and duration of the contract. My client wanted to receive the shortest contract possible with the fewest renewal options. Since my client's most important interest was the amount of money he would receive, I argued for a 4year contract duration to be renewed twice in exchange for a much larger signing bonus. My partner agreed. That concluded our negotiation process. We filled out our debrief and headed back to class.
I felt that if I had a better understanding of the case, I could have earned more points. I should have read more outside standards to know what my limitations were and to get more unique ideas to boost my total amount of points. However I was satisfied with the deal as well as the process of negotiation. I remained focus on my clients main interests and fought more for those. In future negotiation, I will do more research and come up with clever methods of gaining the most from the deal.