If you don’t ask, you don’t get (part 97)

A MEMBER, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells us of a negotiating success. He now wishes he'd asked for even more. That's the even tougher moment, just keeping on pushing after an initial success.

In the spirit of keeping fellow members informed about rates for the job, an update on the NME's recent request to reuse two of my Oasis pieces back in the day.

They initially offered £400, calculated allegedly on the basis that the NME currently pays a £400 flat fee for a cover feature, and a £200 flat fee for reuse. So as Phil Sutcliffe always sagely suggests, on hearing what they were offering I asked for more. And got £600 for the pair.

Not exactly the stuff of the workers' revolution, but better than nowt. Which is exactly what I would have got if I'd signed away my rights when IPC started bullying their freelancers in the mid-to-late-90s.