siderations," Warnings, Notices, &c., for the guidance of the reader. It has been objected as regards these warnings that the tricks or frauds against which they are directed cannot all be guarded against, for obvious reasons. It is, however, well that they should be borne in mind, and if any publisher refuses a clause of precaution he simply reveals his true character, and should be left to carry on his business in his own way.

Let us, however, draw up a few of the rules to be observed in an agreement. There are three methods of dealing with literary property: I. That of selling it outright. This is in some respects the most satisfactory, if a proper price can be obtained. But the transaction should be managed by a competent agent.

II. A profit-sharing agreement.

In this case the following rules should be attended to: (1.) Not to sign any agreement in which the cost of production forms a part.

(2.) Not to give the publisher the power of putting the profits into his own pocket by charging for advertisements

VOL. IX.

[PRICE SIXPENCE.

in his own organs: or by charging exchange advertise. ments.

(3.) Not to allow a special charge for "office expenses," unless the same allowance is made to the author. (4.) Not to give up American, Colonial, or Continental rights.

(5.) Not to give up serial or translation rights.

(6.) Not to bind yourself for future work to any publisher. As well bind yourself for the future to any one solicitor or doctor!

(7.) To stamp the agreement. III. The royalty system.

In this system, which has opened the door to a most amazing amount of overreaching and trading on the author's ignorance, it is above all things necessary to know what the proposed royalty means to both sides. It is now possible for an author to ascertain approximately and very nearly the truth. From time to time the very important figures connected with royalties are published in The Author. Readers can also work out the figures themselves from the "Cost of Production." Let no one, not even the youngest writer, sign a royalty agreement without finding out what it gives the publisher as well as himself.

It has been objected that these precautions presuppose a great success for the book, and that very few books indeed attain to this great success. That is quite true: but there is always this uncertainty of literary property that, although the works of a great many authors carry with them no risk at all, and although of a great many it is known within a few copies what will be their minimum circulation, it is not known what will be their maximum. Therefore every author, for every book, should arrange on the chance of a success which will not, probably, come at all; but which may come.

The four points which the Society has always demanded from the outset are:

(1.) That both sides shall know what an agreement

means.

(2.) The inspection of those account books which belong to the author. We are advised that this is a right, in the nature of a common law right, which cannot be denied or withheld.

(3.) That there shall be no secret profits.

(4.) That nothing shall be charged which has not been actually paid-for instance, that there shall be no charge for advertisements in the publisher's own organs and none for exchanged advertisements, and that all discounts shall be duly entered.

If these points are carefully looked after, the author may rest pretty well assured that he is in right hands. At the same time he will do well to send his agreement to the secretary before he signs it.

FF 2

1.

E

HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.

VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub. lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his business or the administration of his property. If, in the opinion of the Committee and the Solicitors of the Society, the advice sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member has a right to an opinion from the Society's solicitors. If the case is such that Counsel's opinion is desirable, the Committee will obtain for him Counsel's opinion. All this without any cost to the member.

2. Remember that questions connected with copyright and publisher's agreements do not generally fall within the experience of ordinary solicitors. Therefore, do not scruple to use the Society first-our solicitors are continually engaged upon such questions for us.

3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in order to ascertain what has been the nature of your agreements, and the results to author and publisher respectively so far. The Secretary will always be glad to have any agreements, new or old, for inspection and note. The information thus obtained may prove invaluable.

4. If the examination of your previous business transactions by the Secretary proves unfavourable, you should take advice as to a change of publishers.

5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the proposed document to the Society for examination.

6. The Society is acquainted with the methods, and—in the case of fraudulent houses-the tricks of every publishing firm in the country.

7. Remember always that in belonging to the Society you are fighting the battles of other writers, even if you are reaping no benefit to yourself, and that you are advancing the best interests of literature in promoting the independence of the writer.

8. Send to the Editor of The Author notes of everything important to literature that you may hear or meet with.

9. The Committee have now arranged for the reception of members' agreements and their preservation in a fireproof safe. The agreements will, of course, be regarded as confidential documents to be read only by the Secretary, who will keep the key of the safe. The Society now offers :-(1) To read and advise upon agreements and publishers. (2) To stamp agreements in readiness for a possible action upon them. (3) To keep agreements. (4) To enforce payments due according to agreements.

NOTICES.

HE Editor of The Author begs to remind members of the

that, paper is sent to them

of charge, the cost of producing it would be a very heavy charge on the resources of the Society if a great many members did not forward to the Secretary the modest 68. 6d. subscription for the year.

Communications for The Author should reach the Editor not later than the 21st of each month.

All persons engaged in literary work of any kind, whether members of the Society or not, are invited to communicate to the Editor any points connected with their work which it would be advisable in the general interest to publish.

Members and others who wish their MSS. read are requested not to send them to the Office without previously communicating with the Secretary. The utmost practicable despatch is aimed at, and MSS. are read in the order in which they are received. It must also be distinctly understood that the Society does not, under any circumstances, undertake the publication of MSS.

The present location of the Authors' Club is at 3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary for information, rules of admission, &c.

Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they have paid their subscriptions for the year? If they will do this, and remit the amount, if still unpaid, or a banker's order, it will greatly assist the Secretary, and save him the trouble of sending out a reminder

Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the following warning. It is a most foolish and may be a most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest or dishonest? Of course they would not. Why then hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign themselves into literary bondage for three or five years ?

"Those who possess the Cost of Production' are requested to note that the cost of binding has advanced 15 per cent." This clause was inserted three or four years ago. Estimates have, however, recently been obtained which show that the figures in the book may be relied on as nearly correct as near as is possible.

Some remarks have been made upon the amount charged in the "Cost of Production" for advertising. Of course, we have not included any sums which may be charged for inserting advertisements in the publisher's own magazines, or in other magazines by exchange. As agreements too often go, there is nothing to prevent the publisher from sweeping the whole profits of a book into his own pocket, by inserting any number of advertisements in his own magazines, and by exchanging with others. Some there are who call this a form of fraud; it is not known what those who practise this method of swelling their own profits call it.

O

LITERARY PROPERTY.

I. THE COPYRIGHT BILL.

N Monday, April 24, Lord Monkswell moved the second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords. He related the action of the Society of Authors in preparing the Bill which he had himself introduced into the House of Lords. The death of Lord Herschell was a great loss to copyright reform, because he had brought in a large consolidating measure of literary and artistic copyright. The Bill was referred, together with his own, to a Select Committee of Lords. The Committee held a great many meetings, but had not completed the evidence. Meanwhile, another Bill had been prepared by Lord Thring dealing with literary copyright. This Bill which he now proposed to read a second time fixed this term of copyright to the life of the author and

thirty years after death: the present law being a term of the author's life and seven years after, or forty-two years, whichever should be longer. The new Bill provided for the dramatisation, translation, or abridgment of novels: it gave authors of magazine articles copyright after two years from the publication of the articles. It gave copyright in lectures; it gave newspapers copyright in news for twelve hours after publication. There were other points which would be considered in the discussion of the Bill.

It was read a second time and referred to a Select Committee.

II. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR ON COPYRIGHT. A correspondent of the Standard has unearthed a petition presented to Parliament by Walter Savage Landor, and published in the Examiner of April 7, 1839. It is as follows:

That your petitioner would represent to your Honourable House his strong persuasion that no property is so entirely, and purely, and religiously a man's own as what comes to him immediately from God, without intervention or participation. It is the eternal gift of an Eternal Being; and to interfere in any way with its benefits and blessings appears to your petitioner unbecoming and unjust.

Your petitioner therefore humbly submits to your Honourable House that no Legislature has a right to confine its advantages to a thousand or ten thousand years, or to give them away to any person or persons whatsoever, to the detriment of an author's heirs, after any number of ages.

And your petitioner offers the less reluctantly these observations to your Honourable House, since he himself proposes no advantages to his descendants from any of his literary works, all of which he has consigned and left in perpetuity to the discretion of a learned friend.

III. AUTHOR'S CORRECTIONS.

As, after many wrestles, I have successfully bound the "correction" fiend, perhaps the method evolved may be useful to your readers.

1. Alter the agreement, before signing, to "author's alterations"; corrections may include printers' errors.

2. Require a free allowance of alterations per sheet, not an allowance of shillings but of so many words. I generally ask for about one in 300. Be reasonable, and guarantee that you will never overrun a page, and promise to break lines as little as possible. You can always save a page whole, and seldom break more than two lines, if careful in arranging. I am referring to detailed scientific works in saying this; imaginative writers may find more difficulty.

3. Correct and alter in pencil freely on one copy of proof. Then count words and prune if needful when inking in on the other copy for the printer. If you expect trouble use red ink for all your own alterations, and indorse each sheet with number of your alterations on it.

4. And now, perhaps, you have exceeded your allowance at the end of the work. And if you have but a few words more against you than agreed on, you will find probably £5 for corrections put down. Look out the worst page of all; and see if deducting your alterations there will bring you within the agreed limit; if not, take the next worst for alterations also, and so on, until deducting certain pages squares the agreed allowance. Then offer to pay for the entire re-setting of those pages. It is a magnificent offer; you pay for fifty times the work involved, and yet it binds the fiend so that he cannot do entirely as he chooses.

If in course of correcting you want much alteration in a page-more than a line or twodash out the whole page and mark it " Re-set this page and charge to author." Then it is impossible to charge you for more than a few shillings for setting up one page. This method answers both with publishers and in direct contracts with printers.

There is another thing to be said. Accustom yourself to write clean, without needing to alter MS., and then you are less liable to need alterations in proof. I seldom alter more than one word in 200 in MS. To do this, begin by a rule of never trying to write in bad ditions of temperament or surrounding. If distracted, cold, weary, or dull, you will never write a clean page, and the correction fiend will triumph. OFTEN BITTEN.

con

I am much obliged by the Editor's note to my query on author's corrections. I have kept the first proofs, as advised by him. My difficulty is this Printers often put small letters where capitals are distinctly indicated in the MS. They run on where a fresh paragraph is obvious.

Per contra, they leave spaces sometimes when the directions are to save room. Sometimes the proof alters the meaning and effect of a paragraph. This may necessitate an interlineation, and dislocate a whole page, which, as the Editor says, takes time, and causes much additional expense. But must an author be charged with all this, for at the rates given it mounts up enormously? mously? If an author interlineates owing to omissions, or erases an unsatisfactory line (as it seems to him) on appearing in print, I understand he must pay for the luxury, but should he pay for misplaced or misdivided words, &c.? A NEW MEMBER.

IV. NO AUTHOR'S CORRECTIONS. You have often pointed out how the charge made for author's corrections can be kept down

by having the MS. type-written. A novel of mine, "The Passing of Prince Rozan," had to be "set and printed in America. To get proofs over here, revise and return them, would have caused such a serious delay that I decided to do without proofs. My MS. was type-written. I revised it with the greatest care. I further inserted a clause in my agreement that the author would not require proofs, and that the publishers (Messrs. Putnam's Sons) would use their best endeavours to see that all printer's errors were corrected. I am quite satisfied with the result, and have been saved much trouble and expense. It is significant that the publishers made objection to the clause in the agreement, suggesting that they might have to charge for corrections made by their reader; but the claim was inserted and agreed to. JOHN BICKERDYKE,

V.-INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT.

On March 29 last, before Mr. Justice Wills and a common jury, in the Queen's Bench Division, was heard the case of Miln v. Ballin. Mrs. Miln is an American author and journalist who has travelled a great deal, and has written books of travel and papers and essays on various subjects in magazines and papers. Among other contributions was a series of papers on children of various countries which she contributed to a

journal called Madame, reserving the copyright. The defendant owned a paper called Baby, and had reproduced in its columns paragraphs-some thirty in all-verbatim from the plaintiff's essays in Madame. The witnesses for the plaintiff

besides herself were Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr.

John Murray, and Mr. F. W. Slater of Harper and Brothers. The case was practically without defence, except the plea that very little harm was done, if any, to the prospects of the plaintiff's book. Mr. Justice Wills, however, thought that a very considerable wrong had been done to the plaintiff. The jury assessed the damages at £250.

As to the case itself, their could be no doubt of the result. The amount of damages granted to the plaintiff must be taken to represent more a penalty for wrong-doing than an attempt to estimate the damage done to the forthcoming book. People who reproduce literary property without the author's permission must learn that they cannot be allowed to help themselves. No one will ever be able to learn how far the property has been injured, but property must be respected. Therefore the result of the action is quite satisfactory.

VI. HARRISON v. BLOXAM.

(In the Westminster County Court of Middlesex, March 1, 1899.)

Messrs. Haynes and Claremont of 4, Bloomsbury-square, appeared for the plaintiffs. Defendant was represented by counsel, Mr. C. B. Marriott (instructed by Messrs. Field, Roscoe, and Co., 36, Lincoln's-inn Fields), acting on behalf of the Society of Authors.

Mr.

Mr. Marriott stated that his client was a graduate of London University and a Research Chemist carrying out experiments at the Davy-Faraday Laboratory of the Laboratory of the Royal Institution. Bloxam was a candidate for the D.Sc. degree of the University of London, and was required to present a printed thesis showing the results of his experimental work. Mr. Bloxam obtained from Messrs. Harrison an estimate for printing 100 copies demy 8vo. 32 pp. in paper wrapper, amounting to £7 28. Mr. Bloxam's script printed out to forty-eight pages, and for this work an account was sent in by Messrs. Harrison amounting to £15 4s. 6d. Mr. Bloxam considered the charge made to be excessive in view of the original estimate, and entered into correspondence with Messrs. Harrison. Bloxam was perfectly willing to pay a reasonable sum, and by letter suggested a meeting for settlement of the amount due. Messrs. Harrison

manu

Mr.

replied by issuing a County Court summons. Mr. Bloxam then paid into court £10 10s. and share of costs as being sufficient to discharge the debt.

denied that the sum charged was excessive. The The plaintiff (Mr. Harrison) was called, and charge was made for a pamphlet of 56 pp., although defendant recognised only 48 pp. of printed matter. Plaintiff stated that blank pages and titles were charged as printed matter, but he had not warned defendant of this practice. Plaintiff also admitted that extra cost was entailed by sending out proofs in slip form, and that defendant was not consulted on this question, and was left in ignorance of any extra cost thus involved.

Counsel objected on behalf of defendant that no details of extra charges had been submitted by the plaintiff, and that defendant had been allowed to incur extra charges without being warned. Counsel quoted an estimate by Messrs. Richard Clay and Sons to print for £10 148. 100 copies of the pamphlet, for which plaintiff claimed £15 48. 6d. Defendant produced manuscript and proofs, and, on examination by plaintiff and the judge, the MSS. and proofs were admitted to be legible and reasonably free from erasure or alteration.