“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.

(In my letters I intend to demand that we see the version in manuscript to be published by any foreign press, or the galleys, or whatever. We’ll also want written into our contracts our right to be notified when any deals are made, the payments made, and our right to refuse the deal if we decide we don’t like it. We’ll also want to see a copy of the contract itself, and probably know the names of the foreign editors and publishers so we can contact them personally.

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.