negotiations

After I printed out my book contract I wanted to have a shirted printed with “Ask me about my upcoming professionally published cookbook”.

Inspite of my best efforts to read m contract in public places, no one stopped to ask me if I was reading over my book contract, to which I would have happily replied “Why yes it is my first cookbook contract.” I was sure they would want to know more, but no one ever asked. So I read alongside the other coffee shop dwellers going over their screenplays, audition monologues and napkin notes for their great American-novels.

I quickly learned that it was a difficult pile of paper to navigate alone, so I pleaded with anyone that I knew had already published with Whitecap for a snippet of help.

Julie Van Rosendaal came to the rescue. We talked for hours about the ins and outs of contract negotiation, marketing and distribution. She was instrumental in getting through that contract and without her, I would have been lost in a gleeful mess of gidy delirium, just happy to have the contract. Luckily she snapped me out of the reverie and back to the hard reality of negotiating the nitty gritty. 

The truth is that Canadians don’t distribute well, the advances are pretty tiny and if all goes well the best an author can hope for is to make a couple hundred bucks and maybe pay for the groceries they used to test the recipes.

In the US the have book agents and lawyers who handle that sort of thing, but here in Canada we rely on the decency of others and thankfully there was someone like Julie to help me out. She’s getting a free copy, that’s for sure, and for a nominal fee, I might even sign it for her.