“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(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.

My own position cannot be as immediate as your own. I respect your emotional reactions whatever they are, and your right to them. (Loudly and amused:) Seth, it seems, speaks a bit more briefly in Dutch than he does in English —but the material is there, and if the Dutch have cut it, or your notes, it is, in the most basic of terms, now, their loss.

(Pause at 9:28.) Agreements of a legal order should, however, always be honored, and each society has been built upon that precept, so you have of course every right to state your objections—but more, to take precautions so that the same kind of situation cannot reoccur.

There are bound to be distortions—but the distortions themselves are meaningful. You have, again, a definite right to state your objections, and to change your contract accordingly in the future. You have every right to state your clear objections to Prentice about whatever issue you feel unfair. Regardless of all of that, however, and taking all of that for granted, if you will forgive me (whispering), I sometimes feel that you might perhaps both lack a certain trust (loudly) in the nature of your own intents, and in the activity of Framework 2 as far as it concerns you and that publishing house.