Here in Chicago, baseball is king these days. We have two (count ’em, two) teams in the playoffs, something that hasn’t happened in 102 years. And, I must confess, that I am a baseball fan, more specifically, a perpetually suffering, wait-till-next-year, die-hard Cubs fan.

If you follow baseball at all, you’ll be sure to hear or read the comments of a general manager after a “blockbuster” trade. This past season I heard lots of them from Jim Hendry (Cubs) and Kenny Williams (White Sox). And they almost always emphasize that a trade must be good for both teams. But that’s not what fans like me want to hear. We want to get another team’s stud in trade for an unproven minor leaguer to be named later or another teams golden arm for one of our over-the-hill, lame arms. We’d like to trick the other team and win in the deal. But, as the wise general manager will say, “A trade like that might work once, but that team would never trade with us again. A good trade must benefit all the parties.” In other words, it must be a win-win.

That expression, “win-win,” is common in business. Ideally, any negotiation or deal should end with both parties benefiting. Interestingly, in my 20+ years in Christian publishing, I haven’t always found that to be the case. Maybe it’s because my company (The Livingstone Corporation) is small or perhaps because we “serve” publishers. (Of course, it’s also possible that I’m just paranoid or a perpetual whiner.) Often I get the feeling that we are expected to do whatever we can to help the other party succeed at our expense. Usually that happens during our negotiations when the discussion turns to the costs of our services. Sometime it involves schedule.

Let me explain, here, that often we bring product ideas to publishers. At other times, they contact us for help in producing their ideas.

Lest you begin to hear the sound of a fine whine, I have to say that I understand that negotiation involves give and take, back and forth, offer and counter offer. I’m just saying that in all of this I would hope that both parties would be working for win-win. Sometime that means win-win-win (when an agent represents us) or win-win-win-win (when an agent represents someone else to the publisher, and we are retained by either the agent or the publisher).

At times, the publisher is probably thinking, “You don’t understand. This will turn out to be a big investment, and we’re taking all the risk here. We’ve got to make our pro-forma work with sales projections . . . ” At the same time we’re thinking, “You don’t understand. We’re not a freelance brother-in-law who does this in his spare time out of his house. We’re a company of professionals, with real company overhead expenses . . . ” Both valid points. And the negotiations continue.

Eventually, I guess, it gets down to trust with each party wondering if the other one has his or her best interests at heart or is pulling a fast one. We never know for sure, unfortunately, till the deal is done. But if we feel ripped off, we’ll probably not do business with that person or company anytime soon.

Fortunately, through the last couple of decades, I’ve found that most industry veterans understand this and try to work with us. The push back often comes from newer staff who feel the pressure of budget constraints and superiors’ expectations (and they don’t know us very well).

My point is simply this: Let’s at least approach the discussions/negotiations with the goal of win-win.

Dave Veerman, Chief Creative Officer