AT the appointed time, Mr. Parry presented himself. But instead of
proceeding, at once, to settling the preliminaries of the proposed
arbitration, he wished to discuss the question at issue to see if we
could not settle it between ourselves. I unhesitatingly declined, as I
had from the beginning declined to do so. He said he had brought with
him the papers and figures to show exactly how we stood. I declined
to look at them, telling him that I was entirely incompetent to make
a satisfactory examination of such a point, being unsound even on the
multiplication-table. He asked if I would not be satisfied, supposing
they could clearly prove that I had made more money out of the books
than they had. I said not at all, that I had arrived at that point
where I did not, in the least, care how much the publishers made; that
if other authors had ten per cent., I wanted ten per cent., even if
the publishers had to beg their bread from door to door. He seemed a
little nonplused at such heartlessness; said he had come prepared to
show that they had made only about seven tenths as much as I, and he
had supposed that would satisfy me. As I affirmed it would not, he was
somewhat at a loss how to proceed. I told him that in the beginning,
that--and a great deal less, indeed--would have satisfied me, but that
affairs had gone on so long, and feeling been so much aroused, that
no sort of explanation would satisfy me; that I wished the matter to
go entirely away from ourselves into the hands of unprejudiced and
uninterested persons.
[After several months of profound reflection, I will here interpolate
a remark which future commentators will please to remember does
not belong to the original text, namely: that I do not see why the
publisher's profits need be considered as the _ultima Thule_ of an
author's. Is it the phantom of a distorted imagination that the author
has a far larger property in the book than the publisher? Does it
not cost him infinitely more than it costs the publisher? And even
leaving the infinite, and coming down to finite matters, are not the
fields which the publisher reaps so much broader than the author's one
little close, that a far smaller share in the gleanings would give
the publisher a far more heaping granary. An author, we will say,
publishes one book in a year. His profits are a thousand dollars. But
the publisher publishes twenty books a year, on which, in the same
ratio, he gets twenty thousand dollars. Suppose five hundred dollars
were taken from the publisher's profits and added to the author's. The
publisher would still have an income of ten thousand dollars, while the
author would have one of only fifteen hundred.]
Mr. Parry then suggested leaving it to Mr. Stanhope, one of my friends,
a suggestion which I did not adopt. He asked me if I still continued to
prefer that it should be left to more than one person, and I left him
no doubt on that point. He then suggested that we should give up the
two we had chosen, and select entirely new ones. I assured him that I
was not in the least dissatisfied with their choice or my own, and I
would prefer to make no change. He suggested that Mr. Rogers was very
hard of hearing, and might not be able to act on that account. I asked
if he was materially harder of hearing now than when they selected
him to settle the case alone. Mr. Parry did not know that he was, and
finally consented to go on as we had begun. This, in the telling, does
not sound quite straightforward, yet Mr. Parry seemed so frank and fair
that I was more than half convinced, in spite of all other appearances,
that they meant no wrong. At least I did not see how any one could
be conscious of wrong, and yet seem so honest as he seemed. He was
certainly entirely courteous, though, perhaps, it is not parliamentary
to put that in. One tenth part of his fairness in the beginning would
have set my doubts completely at rest. He said--but tenderly enough, as
if he loved me à la Isaak Walton--that they lost money on "Holidays,"
and that the books have not been selling very well for two years past.
For all which I am very sorry. Still I remember that Mr. Hunt was
always urgent for me to make books. The last two books were published
in book form at his suggestion. My first notion was to publish them as
magazine articles. The same was the case with "Old Miasmas." They grew
into books, and I have just found an old letter in which Mr. Hunt says,
"Come out with a bang. The book's the thing in which you will catch the
conscience of the public." And again, "A volume by all means." Nothing
could be more encouraging, and stimulating, and agreeable than his tone
and bearing. I recollect his saying to me, when we were discussing the
last book, "You ought to write only books." In a letter of October 23,
1767, he says, "I think you are quite right not to print your Burnet
article at present, and I hope your thoughts will grow into a volume
to be issued by B. & H., in the spring." In a letter of December 11,
1765, he says, "Your sermon is good, but I hope you will not print it
till you put it into a volume. Ask Brother S., your neighbor, if I am
not right. If you were here, I could tell you a thousand reasons _why_
your interest would not be served in the printing of this paper in a
newspaper or magazine, nor the interest of the reading world, either. I
speak as a fool, no doubt, but in your service.
"I hope you will give all your energy and time to 'Winter Work.' A new
book from your pen in the spring will help the old ones, and is already
asked for by our booksellers in the West and elsewhere."
In short, as I look back, it seems to me that Mr. Hunt's
influence--always pleasantly and heartily exerted--was towards the
production and not the repression of books. I deeply regret that they
have not enriched him to the extent of his desires and deserts, and I
should regret it still more deeply had I urged the publications upon
him as warmly as he urged them upon me.
Although the firm lost money on "Holidays," this paper shows that they
were ready to accept another juvenile book as soon as I told them of
its existence. I suppose there is some occult reason for it, known only
to publishers; but the carnal mind would naturally infer that having
lost money on one, they would be shy of a second venture.
Mr. Parry repeated Mr. Hunt's assertion, that he replied with his own
hand to my first letter of inquiry. Mr. Hunt, in speaking of it to
me, could not recall the exact time of his writing it, but Mr. Parry
said that Mr. Hunt told him that morning, that it was written directly
after the reception of my letter. But in a letter written two or three
weeks after mine was sent, Mr. Hunt says by his amanuensis, "I have
_not_ answered your last letter touching the terms expressed in the
contracts." Mr. Hunt apparently labors under the curious psychological
infelicity of remembering the letters he does not write, and forgetting
the letters he does write.
After Mr. Parry had told me that my books had not been selling well
for a year or two, and that they had lost money on them, I hunted up
old letters of Mr. Hunt's to see if they would not show that he had
urged me to write in the form of books. In doing so I found a letter
dated September 23, 1764, from which I make the following extract: "The
contract has been delayed for a sufficient cause." (He then gives as
a reason Mr. Brummell's absence.) "The percentage will read fifteen
cents per copy, as the business times are fluctuating the prices of
manufacture so there is no telling to-morrow or for a new edition what
may be the expenses of publication, so we reckon your percentage in
every and any event as fixed at fifteen cents per volume on all your
works. If it should cost $1.50 to make the volumes you are sure of
your author profit of fifteen cents. The price at retail may be $1.50,
$2.00, or $3.00, as the high or low rates of paper, binding, etc., may
be, but _you_ are all right. This arrangement we make now with all our
authors."
If I had discovered this letter sooner it would have simplified matters
greatly; but I did not find it till this statement had been, as I
supposed, finished. I therefore thought best to put it in here, in a
sort of chronological order. What I had previously said touching its
substance, I said from memory solely. I could not even have declared
whether its assertions had been made by pen or lips. But I think it
not only fully bears out all that I have alleged, but shows more than
my memory had retained or my perception divined. The letter before its
close says, "As I write the contracts are reported ready, so I enclose
them. Sign both and send back the one marked with red X. You keep one
and we the other."
I see now that in case the books _had_ gone up to $3.00, I should have
been sure of my author profits of fifteen cents and "all right," even
if I had continued on the old terms of ten per cent; but I did not see
it then, nor anything else, for that matter. The reasoning of this
process is not a little remarkable. Prices of all kinds are changing,
therefore your price shall not change. And what kind of percentage is
that which is no percentage at all but an unchangeable quantity?
I made direct inquiries of all the authors accessible to me, whose
works were in the hands of Messrs. Brummell & Hunt, at or about that
time. I received information from some fifteen different persons. With
no one of them did Messrs. Brummell & Hunt make the arrangement they
made with me. Nine reported receiving ten per cent. Some received half
profits. One received twelve cents on a book that retailed at a dollar
and a quarter. One said that he received twelve cents on a dollar and
a half book and ten cents on a dollar and a quarter. Another that he
receives ten per cent. sometimes but not always.
Mr. Hunt often urged upon me the advantage and importance of
my writing only for them; so that, with the exception of the
"Segregationalissuemost," for which I was writing when I began with
Messrs. Brummell & Hunt, I have neither in periodical or book, written
for any other house than theirs. It might seem as if this injunction of
his, all friendly and judicious as it may have been, did put them under
something like an obligation to do as well by me as any other house
would do.
When "City Lights" was published, its retail price was a dollar and a
quarter, and the first account allows me twelve and a quarter cents a
volume. Mr. Parry said that the retail price of the books was changed
five or six times after my percentage was changed to a fixed sum. The
latter change was made in the autumn of 1764. In a copy of "Rocks of
Offense," date 1764, the advertised retail price of all the books
is one dollar and a half. "Old Miasmas" was published in the autumn
of 1764, and was, from the beginning, sold at two dollars. These
are the only prices that I have seen or heard of since the first.
Mr. Parry, however, says they have at two different times been held
at one dollar and seventy-five cents. I think those times must have
been of very short duration, as I never saw those prices advertised,
and never knew of their existence. I have inquired incognito of the
principal booksellers in Athens and not one of them was aware that the
price had ever been put down since it was put up. But, with all the
changes, the difficulties of computing percentage can hardly have been
insurmountable.
Mr. Parry at this time told me what I did not know before,--that the
publishers reserved to themselves in the first contract for "City
Lights" fifteen hundred books. The contract specifies only the first
edition. I suppose an edition has no prescribed size; but I have never
in any other case known more than the first thousand being reserved to
the publishers.
"City Lights" was published September, 1762. On the first of December
of the same year Mr. Hunt reported that before January it would have
gone to a fourth edition. I should like to know if each of those four
editions numbered fifteen hundred volumes. What, for instance, was the
size of the second edition, or the third?
After careful inquiry I found no one in the "regular line" paying or
receiving less than ten per cent., with the possible exceptions I have
mentioned. Mr. Dickson was assured by a prominent member of the firm,
that the Troubadours never think in any case of offering less than
ten per cent. on the retail price, and that in some cases they pay
twelve and a half or fifteen. He is confident that there has been no
change within the last few years, and that ten per cent. is the current
copyright with all reputable publishers, not only in Corinth, but in
other cities. He says an instance occurred with one of their writers in
which they agreed to pay a certain amount per volume; but as there was
an implied understanding that it was so much per cent. on the retail
price, the matter was compromised between publishers and author when
prices went up.