Big advance or double the royalty rate?
Authors, musicians, app developers, and licensors all hit this fork once, with real money on the table: guaranteed cash now, or a richer percentage of whatever sells. Instinct anchors on whichever number looks bigger. A decision tree replaces the instinct with expected value per path, including whether paying for professional help is worth it.
Work Intermediate Decision Tree Pro engine
After you install, this is the model to open.
Advance vs Royalty
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
This one runs on a Pro engine, and every free install includes five full-quality runs on your own numbers, shared across all five Pro engines rather than five for each. After that, Pro is $199/year.
The answer
Rolling the tree back from the leaves gives an expected value for every branch, and the answer is not the one the royalty rate suggests.
- Best contract
- $545k guaranteed-heavy, no launch team
- Royalty-rich EV
- $515k its best path, launching solo
- Launch team adds
- $90k expected royalties, against a $150k fee
- Flip point
- 50% breakout odds where royalty-rich wins
The guaranteed-heavy contract rolls back to $545,000, beating the royalty-rich deal's best path at $515,000. The launch team doubles your breakout odds yet never pays for itself: it adds at most $90,000 of expected royalties against its $150k fee, and would need to lift your odds by 50 points just to break even. But the gap between contracts is only $30,000, so if you honestly rate your breakout odds above 50%, the winner flips to the royalty-rich deal.
The model
Two offers for the same work, a hire-help decision nested under each, and a chance node on how it sells. Every leaf is your net take: advance plus royalty minus any fee.
| Royalty-rich offer | $225k advance + 20% royalty |
| Guaranteed-heavy offer | $400k advance + 10% royalty |
| Lifetime sales | $2.5M breakout vs $1M modest |
| Breakout odds | 30% solo, 60% with launch team |
| Professional launch team | $150k flat fee |
| Leaf payoff | advance + royalty on sales, minus fee |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- Ship at 80% confidence, or run one more validation round?Ship Now or Test More
- When does your rollout actually reach 80% adoption?How Long Until the Team Works the New Way?
- What would regret have to be worth to leap?Should You Take the Career Leap?
- How do you give every team a fair share of every skill?Balanced Team Builder
- Is there a deal that beats splitting the difference?Win-Win Deal Finder
- Will your walk-away price leave any deal zone at all?Deal Zone Odds (ZOPA Simulator)
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Decision trees.