When Messrs. Brummell & Hunt published "City Lights," they made a
contract to pay me ten per cent. on the retail price of the book after
the first thousand copies were sold. I did not know that a contract
was necessary, but they told me it was, and they also wrote my name in
pencil to indicate where I was to write it in ink.
Afterwards they published "Alba Dies" and "Rocks of Offense," without
any contract. When "Old Miasmas" was about to be published, it occurred
to me that if a contract were necessary in one case, it was in another,
and I suggested it to Mr. Hunt. He accordingly had a new contract made
out, embracing these three books, in which the firm agreed to pay me
fifteen cents a volume for each volume sold. I think it must have been
at the time this contract was made out--but I cannot be sure as to the
time--that Mr. Hunt told me that they were going to pay me a fixed
sum, fifteen cents on a volume, instead of a percentage; that that
was the way they were going to do with their authors, on account of
fluctuations, general uncertainties, and so forth. I made no objection.
I felt none. I assented as a matter of course. I thought that was his
business and no affair of mine. I should have thought it intermeddling,
and offensive to friendship, to take exception, and I did not dream
there was anything to take exception to. I had perfect faith in Mr.
Hunt, and reckoned my interests far safer in his hands than in my own.
In the winter of 1767-8, I suddenly awoke to the fact that ten per
cent. was the ordinary rate of payment to the author, and that I had
been receiving for several years only six and two-thirds and seven and
one-half per cent. At the time Mr. Hunt changed his mode of payment, my
books were selling at a dollar and fifty cents a volume, so that ten
per cent. and fifteen cents were the same. I was therefore the less
likely to take exception to the change. The contract embraced "Old
Miasmas," which was about to be published, but when it was published
the price of it and of the rest of the books was put at two dollars,
and has remained so ever since.
All the books that have been published for me by Messrs. H., P., & Co.,
since "Old Miasmas," have been published without contract. On each of
these books, five in number, they have paid me fifteen cents a volume,
except "Holidays," on which they paid ten cents a volume. "Holidays"
was sold at retail for one dollar and a half; "The Rights of Men" for
one dollar and a half; the others were at the price of two dollars.
"The Rights of Men" was not published until after I had made objection
to the low price I had been receiving.
Pearvilles and Troubadours of Corinth, and publishers of Athens, have
told me that ten per cent. on the retail price is the customary pay of
authors.
I claim that Messrs. Brummell & Hunt should pay me the difference
between what they have paid and what ten per cent. would have been, and
that on all books sold in the future, they should pay ten per cent. I
agreed to less, in full faith in their uprightness, and in the belief,
based on Mr. Hunt's statement, and on my own high opinion of their
justice and liberality, that I was faring just as others fared.
Messrs. Brummell & Hunt refuse to pay me more than six and two-thirds
and seven and a half per cent. either for the past or the future,
except on "The Rights of Men."