Discussing Terms

Carl had on a white, long sleeve, button-up, shirt. He had on some black pants. Daniel could see his matching jacket hanging on the back of his chair. He also had brown hair that seemed to be thinning.

There were wrinkles sneaking up on his face along his forehead, mouth, and eyes. Despite this, he looked very youthful, and his smile shined no less than someone in their teens.

"Good evening, Mr. Hernandez. Wow! You're quite young, aren't you!?"

"Yes, sir."

"How old are you?!"

"I'm 17, sir, I turn 18 in 6 months."

"Wow!..."

Carl looked at Daniel for a long time, staring in amazement.

𝘔𝘢𝘯, 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨, 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘦?

"Well, you can call me Carl, Mr. Hernandez, can I call you Daniel?"

"Yes, feel free, Carl."

"Well, here, why don't you step in to our meeting room, and I'll tell you what we can do for you."

"Okay."

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After, showing Daniel into the meeting room, he went outside to talk to his assistant who had been looking at them.

"What do you think?" he asked her.

"He's young isn't he?" she replied.

"Yeah, he said he was 17!"

"What?! And he wrote a book like that?! Isn't that a little crazy?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna go talk to see what's up, but do you have all of the materials ready?"

"I have the contract here, but how much do you think this book could sell for?"

"I don't know, but we might be able to give him a $20,000 advance at least."

"You think so?"

"If anything this book should sell more."

"Well, it is pretty fresh and I think a lot of people would get a kick out of it, it has some 'American Sadist' vibes to it."

"Well, I liked it a little better than 'American Sadist.'"

"What, c'mon, you can't disrespect the classics like that."

"I'm serious, I think it's that good, I'm also not a fan of a whole lot of gore, so..."

"You big baby."

"Yeah, well, whatever, do you have the paperwork or not?"

"Here you go."

"Okay, wish me luck."

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Daniel sat inside of a rectangular room with a big, oval, table and 10 chairs to choose from. Lining the front of the room were windows, that allowed you to see into the office.

While he was waiting for Carl to come in, he looked through the windows and saw someone talking to him around his desk, it was a woman with paperwork in her hands.

She had long brown hair, a fair complexion, and she looked to be his assistant. She had freckles around her face and some on her arms. She looked to be in her 20's, maybe somewhere around 26.

And as they finished their conversation, he saw her walk away, while Carl entered the meeting room.

"Sorry, about that."

"No worries"

Carl took a brief pause, and just looked at Daniel for a few seconds.

"So... I have A LOT of things that I want to talk to you about."

Daniel was very confused with the sudden change in atmosphere, but still responded to Carl .

"Okay, sure, but what do you want to talk about?"

"Well, I guess, number one, why did you write this book?"

Carl took out Daniel's manuscript and placed it on the desk for Daniel to take.

Daniel grabbed it very softly and said;

"I don't know, I just love writing, and after trying over and over, I felt that this was good enough."

"Well, I'm here to tell you that not only is this good enough, but I feel that we could probably publish it today and it could do well."

Daniel was surprised by his praise, but responded;

"Thank you, that means a lot, I'm glad you think well of it."

"Haha, no need to be so reserved, I just wanted to get that out of the way before I told you what we could fix and what our plan would be with your manuscript."

"I see... well, please tell me your thoughts."

"Great, then number one, there are some revisions that I think we could make, regarding the quality and overall feel to make it seem a little more professional. For example, in the manuscript, I outlined some of the general changes I think could be made."

Daniel looked over the manuscript, as he read on he noticed that a lot of the changes that could make it feel better and he didn't really have anyone proofread his piece, so getting a reader who understood his work felt great.

Although, some of the changes felt like they wouldn't be worth it and would diminish his work. Daniel was very protective of the wording and pace of his book.

Carl just stared on and let Daniel read his outlines, sometimes he would notice him scowl and that worried Carl. Many times authors don't like to get their work critiqued or wouldn't really take editing well. On the surface, they would understand, but often times they would become lethargic and unhappy when needing to do the actual edits. This would make the editing process take a lot longer.

After 30 minutes of this, Carl said, "You know we don't have to go over all of them today, but I just wanted to know your own thoughts, and what you thought about getting your book published by us."

Daniel thought for a second then looked at his outlined manuscript and said "I like that you put in a lot of effort into my manuscript, but..."

Daniel flipped through the manuscript again and said "...I don't really like all of the edits and maybe you could listen to me on why I did some of this."

Carl sighed in relief and said "Yes, absolutely, that's why we talk about it first, you don't need to make all of the changes, this is just to bounce off of ideas in order so that YOU can make the changes, it's all up to the author on how he shapes his book."

"Oh, okay, I definitely will make some changes, I see now that some parts are probably a little hard on the reader."

Carl could see that Daniel was genuine and was glad the meeting could proceed in good spirits.

"Okay, so now we can talk about things like the contract."

Daniel wasn't really sure what the going rate was or how contracts worked, but hoped that he didn't get beat too bad in negotiations.

"Okay."

"....So, this is based entirely on projected earnings and those can be a bit rough to estimate, but if I had to say, then I think that we can offer at least $20,000 as an advance and around 10% in royalties for the first 5,000 hardcover copies, then 12% for the next 5000, and finally 15% for everything sold after that. As for paperback, we can do 8% for the first 150,000 copies, then 10% for everything sold after that. Although, we don't really do web versions, that would be around 30% in royalties."

Daniel didn't really hear much after $20,000, so he asked Carl to explain the terms to him again, which Carl had to do 3 more times.

After Daniel reviewed the contract, he decided to ask, "So does this contract make me bound to Warrior Publishing?"

"No, but it does give us and PolarBear Publishing the rights to 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 book and it's distribution."

"I see, well, I probably have to talk to my parents about this first."

"No, it's understandable, I hope you'll come later this week after you talk with them."

"Thank you, and can I take all of this with me?"

"Absolutely, thank you for coming."

The two shook hands and Carl led Daniel out of the office.