“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(All during this time, October–November, we’ve also been involved in a series of hassles with the foreign publishers Ankh-Hermes and Ariston. [...] We do feel let down on the issue of foreign rights by Prentice-Hall, and the overseas publishers as well. [...]

(I also think Prentice-Hall will go through the formality of protesting the cuts to the foreign publishers, without exacting much of any retribution, especially with all that money invested in plates. [...] I always thought the foreign sales were great for the foreign publishers, though, since they owe Prentice-Hall only 6%.

[...] I think she’d be too terrified to be without a publisher, if it came to that, whereas my fighting blood is aroused and I’d be perfectly willing to let the chips fall where they may. [...]

(“Will she have any difficulty getting it published?”)

(“But it will be published?”)

(“Can you tell us who will publish it?”)

[...] As she researched Jane’s published and unpublished notes, journals, and books for The Magical Approach, Laurel learned that my wife had originally intended to call this book The Magical Approach: A Jane/Seth Book, and wrote of it as being “a psychic-naturalistic journal.” [...] (Prentice-Hall published The God of Jane in 1981.)

[...] Like The New York Times, science publishes “all the news that’s fit to print,” meaning all of the news that fits into the officially-accepted view of reality. [...]

[...] Forget the rigors of publishing or whatever (intently). He does not have to publish a book every year on the button. [...]

(Long pause.)I hope to finish our book regardless of your publishing plans and so forth, and at this general point that will be beneficial to our friend as he sees some daily accomplishment made in that area. [...]

[...] The 15 three-ring binders containing her poems, all neatly typed, for example; her essays and journals; other blocks of unpublished Seth material, one of which I mentioned in the Introduction; an unfinished autobiography that perhaps I could put into publishable shape; likewise, passages from an unfinished fourth Oversoul Seven novel, in which Jane dealt with Seven’s childhood; a book of her paintings, with commentary; several early novels that I still believe merit publishing. [...]

When Jane published The Seth Material in 1970, we were quite unprepared for the impact her work would have. [...]

[...] Prentice is not a great trade publisher. Yet you will still be dealing with the same kinds of people, and Ruburt has done well as far as publishers are concerned, in handling innovative books published by the firm. [...] They were also innovative, in their terms, in the publishing of material before the current interest in unofficial events.

In the matter of publishing, or selling paintings, others are involved—others who very rarely in their lives experience that important encounter between, say, the self as actualized and the idealized sensed self, between the painting or the poem as an ideal and the actualization of that ideal. [...]

[...] The Seth Material was published. [...] When at his request I rediscovered Seth, Dreams … three months ago, and examined it, I couldn’t believe that that finished manuscript had never been published. I’m most pleased that Jim Young accepted it at once for Stillpoint Publishing — just as I know Jane is!

[...] However, I liked both Jim’s ideas of my doing the Preface for Jane’s book, and of publishing a photo of her. And Laurel Lee Davies, the young lady who’s now helping me carry on my publishing activities, at once intuitively picked out from my files the one right photograph of Jane to us for Seth, Dreams … Jane’s father, Delmer Roberts, took the snapshot when she was on vacation with him in Baja, California in 1951. [...]

[...] By rights, I shouldn’t be mentioning it sequentially until I publish the two books that Jane and I had finished while she was hospitalized — then it would be all right to announce that she is dead! [...] is publishing in two volumes in the spring and fall of 1986. [...]

1. In October 1979 Jane and I saw, to our dismay, that the Dutch publisher of the translation of Seth Speaks had violated his contract with Prentice-Hall by making many unauthorized cuts in the book. It was supposed to be published in its entirety, but language difficulties led to the mixup. After hearing from Jane and me and her editor, Tam Mossman, the Dutch publisher agreed to market a new, uncut translation of Seth Speaks this year. [...]

[...] The books were published. [...]

We’d intended to publish Volume 1 before Politics, but since Jane finished her book before I could complete the notes for the two Seth books (I found it necessary to do many of the notes for both volumes together), we decided to publish Politics first instead. [...] So it’s obvious, then, that Politics jumps ahead of “Unknown” Reality as far as a strictly correct publishing chronology is concerned.

We want those references to help the reader place each one in a time sequence, regardless of when any particular book might have been first published. [...] When I note, for example, that Psychic Politics “is to be published this Fall (in 1976),” I know, of course, that by the time the first volume of Seth’s work is in print in the spring of 1977, Politics will actually have been on sale for several months. [...]

Seth himself said nothing about publishing “Unknown” Reality in one volume, two volumes, or even more, while he was producing it. [...]

[...] The poems are of high qualityindeed, and Jane felt certain from the start that they would be published. It is difficult to publish poetry in hard-cover.

Ruburt will find incidentally that his book of poetry, the new and rather swiftly written one, will be published. [...]

[...] When she got the burst of energy on the poetry book idea however, she took advantage of it, and felt certain the material would be published. [...]

(For the moment I’d forgotten the notes I wrote concluding the last session, deleted for November 12, having to do with Seth suggesting we throw our hassles with Prentice and foreign publishers into Framework 2; I’d written that I didn’t know whether or not I was capable of doing that at this time. [...]

Now: We want to publish the book—and I will here continue, for our purposes, dealing with a book’s production rather than a painting’s. Still, however, we will keep the idea of a painting for a different reason. [...]

[...] Certain things at this point are already set, say: you already have a publishing house, and particular people are involved whether or not you know them. [...]

(Seth reiterated that Jane’s book on the Seth material would be published, and that the poetry book would be published. He did not say who would publish them, and I did not ask. [...] Jane’s publisher F. Fell, has written asking for photographs pertaining to the Seth book; in connection with this and in answer to my question, Seth said he would be amused to see a reproduction of my painting, purporting to be Seth, in the book. [...]

(Today Jane received the galley proofs of her ESP book, along with the original manuscript, from her publisher by special delivery. [...] They were made evidently either by a psychologist or parapsychologist, probably at the invitation of the publisher before he accepted the book. We had considered this possibility, although the publisher had not mentioned it to us.

[...] Jane plans to ask her publisher, F. Fell, for the name of the author of the notes, and for a copy of the covering letter he refers to. [...]

[...] Prentice-Hall authorized this venture by a foreign publisher well over a year ago, but we didn’t know just when we’d see books within the two-year limit set for publication. [...] The publisher, Ariston Verlag, is actually located in Geneva, Switzerland; German is one of the four national languages of that country.

(In addition, we expect that later this year the Dutch translation of Seth Speaks will be published — but again, we don’t know just when this will happen. [...]

(“Seth, is Continental going to publish Jane’s book of poetry?”)

(“What publisher should Jane send Enemies to next?”)

(“Seth, what publisher shall I send the cover drawing to?”)

Yet every so often in this series I’ll be including sessions that are also of more outgoing subject matter—more like the sessions in Jane’s published Seth books. [...] This book has never been published. [...]

During her journey (and mine) I helped her publish 19 volumes of the Seth material, fiction, and poetry, and since her death in 1984 I’ve added 12 more so far, including this first volume of The Personal Sessions. I’m sure that Jane knows what I’m doing, and identifies with the poignancy I feel as I begin this latest publishing venture. [...]

[...] As the sessions piled up and books were published that balancing between public and private material came to seem quite natural; it actually became another portion of Jane’s abilities that was as creative in its way as any other aspect of the sessions: if the personal sessions were available, why not take them? Often they helped greatly, as the record will show in my attempt to publish all of the Seth material. [...]

[...] They are a mainline publisher, which means that their books go to people in all walks of life — in libraries and bookstores and so forth. It is much better that the books compete in such a fashion with the other material of your times, rather than be published, say, by a specialty house, or coddled along the way, for we speak to all of those people.

[...] On the other hand, I can visualize the dilemma those at the publisher’s feel when they’re being asked to print ideas that are, at least in part, so contrary to accepted belief structures in a very important field.…

The collection will include our family trees; my father’s journals and photographs; Jane’s and my own grade-school, high-school, college, and family data; our youthful creative efforts in writing and painting; the comic books and other commercial artwork I produced; our early published and unpublished short stories; my original notes for the sessions; session transcripts, whether published or unpublished, “regular,” private, or from ESP class; tapes, including those made in class of Jane speaking for Seth and/or singing in Sumari; our notes, dream records, journals, and manuscripts; our sketches and paintings; Jane’s extensive poetry; our business correspondence; books, contracts, and files; newsletters about the Seth material, published in the United States and abroad (independently of Jane and me); the greater number of letters from readers—in short, a mass of material showing how our separate beginnings flowed together and resulted in the production of a joint lifework.

(“When The Seth Material was published and we went on tour: did this revive or intensify his fears about leading people astray?”)

In the beginning, if you recall, he made little effort to have the material published, or even to deal with the material itself in those terms. [...]

[...] He made the jump to publish the teachings, to that extent, so far.

(On Friday, June 21, 1968, Jane sent the manuscript of her dream book to Parker Publishing Company Inc., Village Square Building, West Nyack, N Y. On Saturday, June 28, a card arrived from Parker with this message:

[...] I did not do so because I remembered a dream Jane had had recently, in which I had picked up the mail, then teased her about an optimistic letter from a publisher, concerning the dream book. [...]

When you publish a paperback of ours, this is like publishing a new book for the first time. [...]

[...] Publishing them in paperback presents a different picture. [...]

[...] Your purposes and the purposes of the three publishers all mix and merge, with unconscious knowledge of the importance of the books, and the ways in which they are to be presented—not that there won’t also be some “natural” misunderstandings here and there, also.