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selling concept to my company - what percent to ask for?

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selling concept to my company - what percent to ask for?

I'm considering "selling" a cartoon show idea to the company that I work for. It's a new situation for me and I'm looking for feedback.

We're an interactive development company and not really an animation studio, per se. (although, our owner has some entertainment business in his dim past.)

To pitch this concept to the market I'm targeting, I needed to produce a pilot. I decided to explore making it a company thing since to do it all on my own would take me another several months (based on how my past side projects have gone.) This way I would trade ownership* for being able to see it done faster AND being able to work on it at my day job for once; having access to other artists, writers, recording facilities, etc.

*I've loosely described the idea for him and he's interested. Of course he says he'd want it to be company owned, but that we would negotiate some kind percentage for me as the creator. That's the big question. I need to bring him a number--the percentage I'm asking for--to start the ball rolling. I would appreciate any sage advice.

tedtoons's picture
Ted Nunes - www.tedtoons.com

Ted Nunes - www.tedtoons.com

I'm considering "selling" a cartoon show idea to the company that I work for. It's a new situation for me and I'm looking for feedback.

We're an interactive development company and not really an animation studio, per se. (although, our owner has some entertainment business in his dim past.)

To pitch this concept to the market I'm targeting, I needed to produce a pilot. I decided to explore making it a company thing since to do it all on my own would take me another several months (based on how my past side projects have gone.) This way I would trade ownership* for being able to see it done faster AND being able to work on it at my day job for once; having access to other artists, writers, recording facilities, etc.

*I've loosely described the idea for him and he's interested. Of course he says he'd want it to be company owned, but that we would negotiate some kind percentage for me as the creator. That's the big question. I need to bring him a number--the percentage I'm asking for--to start the ball rolling. I would appreciate any sage advice.

how big is the company you are pitching to? how far do you think they can take it?

since you are not going to bring any capital to its actual production i would probably start with a 15% of the gross for all licensing, merchandise, digital and tv revenues.

negotiate and settle for between 7%-10%.

The deal & the reasoning behind it

Thanks for the input. Here's what I wound up doing (with some input from my father-in-law, a lawyer who has some experience with negotiating for songwriters):

The concept is fairly narrowly centered around a country music and Nashville (Music City) theme. More generally it's about trying to be famous (something you see a lot of around here.) Since songwriters are an element to this, my father-in-law's frame of reference served as a pretty good guide. (not apples to apples, but gave me something to work from.)

According to him, in a typical songwriting/publisher deal it might be a 50/50 split of any revenue from licensing. (gross revenue--that's an important distinction.) I would be getting paid a salary while I worked on the cartoon, using other company staff and equipment BUT I will also certainly be voluntarily working overtime on it (since I'm personally invested in seeing this get done), so I triangulated a little and I asked for 25% of any sale or licensing of the idea. My boss said okay. Nothing inked yet, but I'm pretty excited.

Although, my company hasn't done anything exactly like this, but they do have a catalog of e-Learning titles and experience in negotiating licensing. Another appealing reason for bringing the idea to them, as I have no experience in that sort of thing.

As for merchandising, that would be part of this deal, but I'm not sure if this concept will generate much of that kind of thing. It's not that kind of show--country music doesn't lend itself to plush toys or lunch boxes, but I'll see if I can think of something.

Ted Nunes - www.tedtoons.com

i hope you put in a clause where if they dont act or move on the concept it reverts back to you.

20% of nothing is nothing.

Put a deadline

Just to add a little to the above comment, I recomend puting a deadline and define a calendar of actions.

http://www.chico-chihuahua.com