re: #256 Backwoods_Sleuth

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negotiating the art of the deal:

In 1985, Tony Schwartz, a not very famous writer, was interviewing Trump for a magazine article when Trump told him that Random House had asked him to write a book. Schwartz suggested calling it The Art of the Deal. Trump said he liked the name and asked Schwartz to write it. Normally ghost writers get a small flat fee, but Schwartz asked for half of the $500,000 advance and half the royalties and got both, an incredible deal for Schwartz (who could have been replaced by any one of a hundred other ghostwriters) and an incredibly bad deal for Trump. The book was a big success and the millions of dollars in royalties that Schwartz got all came directly out of Trump’s pocket. Thus we have the irony that Trump negotiated a terrible deal for himself on a book about how great a negotiator he is.