“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Yesterday we received from Prentice-Hall the Dutch edition of Seth Speaks [Seth Spreekt], published by Ankh-Hermes. We saw at once that the book had been rather drastically cut—not only my own notes, which contain excerpts from Seth material at times—but Seth’s material itself. This is particularly obvious in the appendix, where only a few pages are left of all of that material. No greetings or responses are included except in isolated instances, nor any good-evenings and closing notes. Times are also left out, and no words are underlined. I suspect also that throughout the book, without my having checked yet, portions of the sessions have been cut whenever they were dependent upon notes that were cut. Some of the sessions, then, are only a page and a half, or two, long.

(Our first reactions were ones of such stunned surprise that we didn’t even get mad. It took a while for the extent of the revision—or condensation—to sink in, I guess, and I’m still understanding the cutting as I leaf through the book occasionally, before making a list of what I can be sure was cut.

(Jane immediately called Tam, to learn that, ironically, all of the bigwigs at Prentice-Hall are in Europe, attending the book fair at Frankfurt, Germany, I believe is where it is. It appears that we can do little until the 22nd of October, although I plan to start writing letters before that. I bitterly resent the cutting in the first place, and the time that will be spent away from Mass Events, now, as I do all the work necessary to make our points. Jane finally agrees that we must take certain actions now in our professional lives, and we don’t know what will happen. I can only think at this writing [on the 14th] that we must do all we can to stop such practices by foreign publishers, or we’ll surely regret it deeply in the years to come. We definitely know we’ve been taken advantage of, but basically feel it is Prentice-Hall’s fault for not checking the work in progress.

(Jane also discussed with Tam a number of points growing out of our last royalty statements; some of these are quite legitimate gripes that we’ve kept quiet about for some time. Her implications to Tam were clear enough—we hope: that for the first time she was thinking of alternate courses of action to being published by Prentice-Hall, perhaps trying other publishers, Eleanor Friede among them. I was all for that, I told her. During the week after the Dutch edition arrived, we received from Tam the contracts for God of Jane and Mass Events, both of which contain phrases and clauses in an effort to get around Prentice-Hall’s habit of withholding percentages of earnings against returns. She told Tam she wouldn’t sign them, nor do I want her to. Prentice-Hall even wants to apply any losses for God of Jane against Mass Events after 18 months, in an effort to make one book pay for another! As it is, Prentice-Hall is now applying earnings from the paperback Politics against the hardcover losses—a method Tam says is common in the trade, but which I think is ethically dishonest, to say the least. They did the same thing with Adventures; in this case, that action wiped the board clean for the hardcover Adventures, and even showed a small profit from the paperback sales. But still, it costs us. I view such tactics as the publisher’s way of guaranteeing their publishing costs with no risk to themselves. Instead of charging hardcover losses against taxes as a business expense, say, they charge the author for them; this means they do not have to pay the author any royalties on paperback sales, for at least several years. I don’t think Jane yet grasps the implications here.

(In addition, I want to do what we can to get sales reports from Prentice-Hall re Bantam sales [which we know aren’t great], and from the Pocket Books/Fell fiasco. I plan to write the editor-in-chief at Pocket Books as soon as I find out his name and address, asking him for sales figures; we haven’t had a royalty report from Fell in a year. I want to ask Eleanor Friede for the name of a lawyer to see what can be done to get information from Fell. [She offered to help us that way several years ago, I think.] Perhaps Eleanor can advise us about Pocket Books names, also. Eleanor is also in Europe, by the way.

Whenever a book is translated, it is almost impossible, of course, to say the same thing in the same way. Such a book will always be expressed through those invisible national characteristics that are so intimately involved with language—and obviously, were that not so; no book could be understood by someone of a foreign language.

(Pause at 9:4l.) If, hypothetically, either of you believe that Prentice is trying to “screw you up,” and if you accept that statement, or belief, then invisibly you set out to prove it. The evidence comes in. In your society writers need publishing houses. Most publishers are businessmen. They rarely pretend to be themselves creative—yet all publishers, and people who work for them, are also intrigued by the products of creativity, and at least to some degree, being well reimbursed, they do indeed use their quite different abilities to distribute the creative products that they could not themselves initiate. To date, and in the long run, and despite quite legitimate gripes, considering the nature of our books, and your own joint characteristics, Prentice has been a good choice.

There are some reincarnational connections involving Tam, but the overall important point is that in its way, Prentice has attempted to maintain the books’ integrity, and not made any effort to distort the message, to sensationalize it, as for example the Bantam covers, or to personally exploit Ruburt, yourself, or the situation.

They have not forced interviews upon you, and many houses certainly would try it. They have even, at times, kept the books in print that were selling poorly for a period, though this did not obviously apply to Seven.

Of course, probabilities always operate, and I am speaking now of the situation as it stands. Prentice has also given Ruburt some considerable freedom, with the exception of Emir, to write a variety of different kinds of books—something that some larger corporations might well indeed not do.

The entire body is really being worked upon, with resulting looseness of tensions that become more apparent at certain points. Both of you try—try (whispering) to disconnect your creative work from the practical considerations of contracts, and have Ruburt play with his own book. He will find the results of such play excellent.

There is an abundance of energy available this evening for several reasons, and I will help Ruburt’s body utilize much of it. Ruburt mentioned your dream contest. Start it up again. While we are working on our new book you may find yourselves involved with some new types of dreams.

As for our books—I can only tell you that everything is working for your favor, and regardless of any seeming conflicts. You might try taking that for granted.