“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.