Should I accept an offer of a 'flat fee'?

Should I accept an offer of a 'flat fee'?

Jonny Geller (Managing Director - Curtis Brown (Books)) gives expert video advice on: How do advances and royalties work?; Should I accept an offer of a 'flat fee'? and more...

A flat fee doesn't happen in publishing. It happens sometimes in script writing. It sometimes happens if you're a ghost-writer where you get a flat fee, and no royalties. You just go in, you write and you leave. The principle that literary agenting works on is that writing has a long life and that, actually, books stay in copyright for 70 years after the author's death. If you were to get a flat fee, that's it! For example, if our most famous client, A. A. Milne, who wrote "Winnie the Pooh", got a flat fee for "Winnie the Pooh", we wouldn't be here today. Certainly the hundreds of millions of dollars made out of "Winnie the Pooh" merchandising would have gone just to the publishers, manufacturers and film studios, so the person who created it wouldn't have got anything.