“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(All during this time, October–November, we’ve also been involved in a series of hassles with the foreign publishers Ankh-Hermes and Ariston. We’ve learned to our sorrow and rage that both entities have cut their versions of Seth Speaks, without our permission or knowledge, and have struggled to exert what force we could in order to rectify the situation. I thought it much more likely that these sorts of challenges were much more likely to be behind my problems. We do feel let down on the issue of foreign rights by Prentice-Hall, and the overseas publishers as well. As I’ve said to Jane more than once, “I wonder what we ought to know that Tam hasn’t told us”—meaning of course that every time a hassle develops with Prentice-Hall we find out a new batch of information that Tam has known all along but never relayed to us. This makes for a series of ugly surprises along the way of our travels with Prentice-Hall, since they always seem to involve money in a negative way, or royalties being withheld, etc.

And particularly they would declare as futile and nonsensical the concentration upon issues or work that does not immediately bring ordinarily recognizable prestige, or a sense of belonging.

The issue of money has been important because of the conventional male values, and even with Prentice it seems you are not being a man unless you stand up to them. What you do is less important than what you think of what you are doing. Your painting is important. You should not abandon it—and that is also part of the problem.

(9:28.) Give us a moment.... The issue at Prentice, then, has been charged, not simply because of the errors made there, or abroad, but because of what those errors and stupidities represented to you—their symbolic content.