“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.

(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.

The dream of course involved your conflicts over Seth Speaks in the Dutch edition, and your feeling on the one hand that you must speak out to Prentice, while at the same time resenting the loss of your peace of mind.

[...] Although I have edited it, I can hardly wait to see it published!)

[...] My congratulations on the new edition of Seven.

(Seth meant the Pocket Book edition of The Further Education of Oversoul Seven, which had arrived from Prentice-Hall last night — nine copies.

[...] I added that we expected the Dutch translation of the same book to be published later this year, but that we didn’t know just when this would happen — so Jane and I were understandably surprised last Thursday to receive a letter from a reader in Holland, informing us that he’d just purchased a copy of the Dutch edition of Seth Speaks! [...] Could our correspondent have meant the German edition instead? [...]

[...] Janet Mills, the publisher and editor for the new editions of Jane’s books, suggested that I write a bit about the situation. [...]

[...] Later, she helped me proofread the new editions of Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality that Amber-Allen/New World Library has published. [...]

[...] I asked if Seth could comment on the fact that F. Fell had canceled, or postponed, the appearance of the paperback edition of Jane’s ESP Power. [...]

[...] Jane thinks Tam meant the paperback edition of Volume 2 of “Unknown,” since the week’s sales figures, which arrived today, show sales of some 3,000 copies of that edition. [...]

[...] In the mail for yesterday I found the new cover design for the trade paper edition of The God of Jane — a nice-looking job, we like it. [...]

[...] The call was in response to my letter to Nancy on October 22, re Tam telling Jane that Pocket Books had published the paperback edition of Seven II. [...]

[...] She wants to check the next five chapters before sending them to Tam, who will send them to SC when he edits them, but she hasn’t done any work on them recently. [...]

(All week we’ve been doing additional medical notes for the copy-edited manuscript of Mass Events. [...]

[...] You saw the disclaimer as fact, imagined it in your minds on the pages of our books, projected all of that onto future books, and for fine good measure you both imagined this famous disclaimer published in editions of all the books as well.

[...] The particular volume or edition of the encyclopedia came out in the fall, and at the time this guy was working there was some kind of mathematical dispute going on, and a schedule set for some kind of conference to be held at the university for mathematicians from all around. [...]

[...] This guy’s name was removed from the following two editions of the encyclopedia as a result... [...]

[...] See the second session, with an edited version of Rob’s notes, deleting only highly personal material.

(About the letter business: Yesterday Jane had called Tam, and learned to our complete surprise that last August Pocket Books had published a paperback edition of the second Seven book: The Further Education, etc. [...]

[...] Because of paper problems, costs, et cetera, the edition is to be in two volumes, and there’s a two-year time limit. [...] So the two foreign-language editions of that book are certainly good news —the kind that Seth wants Jane to list daily, as he suggested she do. [...]

[...] We hope these two editions will lead to the publication of Seth’s material in other languages.

[...] Not edited or prettied up, but as is. [...]

[...] Rooney, incidentally, can be seen in a photograph with Jane on the jacket of The Seth Material, hard cover edition.

[...] Today she’s been “pretty well out of it,” while trying to help me get through the changes we want to make in the copy-edited Mass Events. [...]

[...] Advertising, printing, editing, etc., would be involved.)

[...] have but a few sessions left to check on the copy-edited manuscript for Mass Events. [...]