“An interesting offer,” Pauline said.
“Yeah,” said Steph with a grunt of disgust. “And it also would have made me part of management and therefore no longer protected by our collective bargaining agreement. Therefore, if I accepted the position, I automatically would have become an at-will employee. How long do you think I would have been head of the physical education department before they decided I wasn’t working out and fired me?”
“Not very long, I’m guessing,” Jake said.
“I told them where they could stick their offer,” Steph said with a smile.
“I wish I could have been there to see it,” Pauline replied.
They spent a few minutes looking at their menus and then put in their orders. Jake went with the prime rib, medium rare, and a fully loaded baked potato. Marcie, Jim, Steph, and Jeremy all followed his lead. Rick elected to go with the filet mignon. Pauline ordered the grilled swordfish with rice pilaf and steamed vegetables. Jake ordered two seventy-dollar bottles of Merlot to go with the meals. Pauline elected to join them in the wine even though she was eating white meat.
While waiting for their meals to arrive, they decided to go ahead and talk some business.
“I notice you did not bring your lawyer to the meeting,” Pauline pointed out. At her suggestion, they had hired a New York attorney who specialized in entertainment contracts to look over their last contract with KVA.
“We did not,” Jim said. “He charges five hundred and seventy-five dollars an hour for his services, with a minimum eight hours of billing, paid in advance.”
“That’s pretty steep,” Jake had to agree.
“And it was pretty big waste of money as well,” Jim said. “It only took him about thirty minutes to go over the contract with us and declare that it was extraordinarily generous and equitable for a first-time recording deal and that it contained no hidden loopholes or bear traps. He told us we would be fools not to accept it as is, and then went and cashed our check for four thousand, six hundred dollars.”
“And that was just what he charged for us to go to his office in New York,” Steph said. “If we were to employ him for his services at this meeting, he would have charged us another hundred an hour for travel fees and we would have had to pay for his first-class round trip air travel and put him up in a five-star hotel.”
Pauline nodded knowingly. That was pretty much standard pricing for such a service. “You can at least afford that now,” she pointed out.
“True,” Jim agreed. “But ... well ... I think we have learned to trust you two. We’ll hear what you have to say and we’ll read over any contract with the idea that you are not out to screw us.”
“We are not out to screw you,” Jake promised. “That is not how we operate.”
“We know that,” Steph said. “That’s why we voted—unanimously, I might add—to just negotiate the new contract with you the way we did the last one.”
“We appreciate that,” Pauline said. “Now ... how about we put our cards down on the table? Let’s start with the biggest issue first: royalties. We paid you fifteen percent for the last album. It was very successful and continues to get frequent national airplay and sell an average of ten to twenty thousand CDs each month. That puts you in a position of significantly increased strength for this negotiation. We are assuming you would like an increase in that royalty rate?”
“Well ... yes,” Jim said. “Naturally, we think we should get a little bigger piece of the pie now that we have established ourselves.”
“Give us a number,” Pauline said.
The five band members looked at each other, passing silent communication back and forth. It was obvious they had talked about this prior to the meeting and come up with a plan. But it seemed it was a plan they were not entirely comfortable with. The looks built in intensity and then mellowed as a consensus was seemingly reached. Nods were given. And then Jim looked at Pauline. “We think that twenty percent would be fair,” he said, his tone almost, but not quite, phrasing it as a question.
Pauline smiled. So did Jake.
“You’re right,” Jake said. “Twenty percent is perfectly fair. We agree.”
They all looked confused at his words. “You ... you agree?” Jim asked. “You mean ... like... agree agree? To twenty percent?”
“That is correct,” Pauline told him. “Twenty percent is not unreasonable in the least and we accept that offer.”
“Oh ... I see,” Jim said, obviously taken aback.
“Just out of curiosity,” Jake said, “what rate would you have accepted as your hard floor?”
“Uh ... well ... we agreed to offer twenty percent on the assumption that you would not take the first offer. We would have accepted nothing less than seventeen percent.”
“You sell yourselves a little short,” Jake suggested with a chuckle.
“What about you two?” Steph asked. “You said yes to twenty immediately. What was your hard ceiling?”
“Twenty percent,” Jake said.
“How’s that?” Steph asked.
“We agreed that we would pay you twenty percent royalties before we even got on the plane in Los Angeles,” Jake explained. “That’s at least five percent more than you could get from any of the big four; and, of course, we don’t tack on any recoupable expenses other than the advance money.”
“So...” Steph asked, “if we had offered seventeen percent right off the bat—and we had some discussion about doing just that—what would you have done?”
“We would have countered with twenty percent,” Pauline said. “The amount was not negotiable in either direction. Twenty percent is what we decided to offer and that is all we will accept.”
“Then why did you have us name a number?” Jim asked. “Why not just offer the twenty percent?”
“Because then you might have tried for twenty-five percent,” Pauline said. “And that might have led to hard feelings and mistrust when we turned you down.”
“Besides,” Jake added, “we were curious about where you would start your negotiations.”
They all had a little laugh about that.
“All right then,” Pauline said. “Twenty percent royalties is settled. Next subject: Advance money. We gave you fifty thousand dollars to live on during the recording process last time. That’s just your bill paying money and your money for incidentals while we’re down in LA for workups and then up in Oregon for the actual recording process. We pay for your housing, transportation, food, and household booze out of our own pockets. Does fifty thousand work for you this time around, or do you want a little more?”
They looked at each other for a moment and shrugged. “Fifty thousand is fine with us,” Jim replied. “In truth, we probably don’t even need an advance at all. We all have money in the bank now. We just need to remember to actually sit down and pay the bills while we’re away.”
“Yeah, and to have them forwarded to wherever we’re staying,” Steph said. “That is a pain in the ass that bit all of us in the butt a little the last time around.”
“Nerdly pays most of his bills online now,” Jake said.
“Online?” Steph asked. “How does that work?”
“His bank has a website,” Jake said. “He is able to log in and tell his bank who he owes money to, what the account numbers are, and how much to pay. Once he does that, the bank either mails or electronically sends the money to them. And then they save the account information for the next time so he doesn’t have to type it all in every month.”
“No shit?” Steph asked.
“No shit,” Jake confirmed. “I’ve seen him do it. He can even set it up so the bills that are the same amount every month get paid automatically.”
“Wow,” Jim said. “That’s pretty high-tech.”
“I’ll have him show you how to do it once you get up to Oregon,” Jake promised. “He just arranged for the latest, greatest computer technology up there, complete with a DSL line.”