“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(The upshot of all of this at the moment is that Jane will not be signing any contracts at this time, and that we’ll be informing Prentice-Hall that we won’t be contracting for any work for them until our questions and assurances are amply demonstrated. I see no other way to head off lots of trouble in the future. I’m personally quite willing to let the chips fall where they may, to coin a phrase, but I’m not at all sure that Jane will agree to go along. My thoughts are that she’d be so terrified to find herself without a publisher that she’d stand for a lot more than what has happened, bad as that is. But we’ll see. I for one have to do or say something, or I’d spend my days thinking about what a fool and coward I was not to stand up for my rights. Our meek acceptance of the deal, I’m afraid, would only lead to more of the same. This would surely drive me out of publishing if I let that happen. As it is, my opinion of Prentice-Hall has sunk to a new low, and it was low enough to begin with.

In the dream they both stood for completely different attitudes of your own, and here you see them objectified in your separate parents—for you do indeed identify those different tendencies with your parents to a strong extent.

I do not want to upset you, but if the Dutch may cut a bit here and there, you might find that any French or Spanish translation might add a flourish here or there.

I really do not want you to think that I am lecturing the both of you. I am only trying to show you how you form the events of your lives.

(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.

When either of you say that your purposes and Prentice’s merge, or your attitudes merge, you have a tendency to mean that this merging is somehow detrimental—that if you expected more (underlined), Prentice would do more: advertise, or whatever, and that is not the case.

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.

He will shortly find that some days he can walk fairly easily—perhaps 10 steps—in that manner, or maybe even twice in one day, while for a few days in between he is not in good-enough balance. I would suggest walking three times a day now, as he has been doing, but one more time.

Do you have any questions?