The part to be selected according to the taste, object, or judgment of the reader.
October 22, 1768.
THE CASE IN BRIEF.
When Messrs. Brummell & Hunt published “City Lights,” they made a contract to pay me ten per cent. on the retail price of the book after the first thousand copies were sold. I did not know that a contract was necessary, but they told me it was, and they also wrote my name in pencil to indicate where I was to write it in ink.
Afterwards they published “Alba Dies” and “Rocks of Offense,” without any contract. When “Old Miasmas” was about to be published, it occurred to me that if a contract were necessary in one case, it was in another, and I suggested it to Mr. Hunt. He accordingly had a new contract made out, embracing these three books, in which the firm agreed to pay me fifteen cents a volume for each volume sold. I think it must have been at the time this contract was made out—but I cannot be sure as to the time—that Mr. Hunt told me that they were going to pay me a fixed sum, fifteen cents on a volume, instead of a percentage; that that was the way they were going to do with their authors, on account of fluctuations, general uncertainties, and so forth. I made no objection. I felt none. I assented as a matter of course. I thought that was his business and no affair of mine. I should have thought it intermeddling, and offensive to friendship, to take exception, and I did not dream there was anything to take exception to. I had perfect faith in Mr. Hunt, and reckoned my interests far safer in his hands than in my own.
In the winter of 1767-8, I suddenly awoke to the fact that ten per cent. was the ordinary rate of payment to the author, and that I had been receiving for several years only six and two-thirds and seven and one-half per cent. At the time Mr. Hunt changed his mode of payment, my books were selling at a dollar and fifty cents a volume, so that ten per cent. and fifteen cents were the same. I was therefore the less likely to take exception to the change. The contract embraced “Old Miasmas,” which was about to be published, but when it was published the price of it and of the rest of the books was put at two dollars, and has remained so ever since.
All the books that have been published for me by Messrs. H., P., & Co., since “Old Miasmas,” have been published without contract. On each of these books, five in number, they have paid me fifteen cents a volume, except “Holidays,” on which they paid ten cents a volume. “Holidays” was sold at retail for one dollar and a half; “The Rights of Men” for one dollar and a half; the others were at the price of two dollars. “The Rights of Men” was not published until after I had made objection to the low price I had been receiving.
Pearvilles and Troubadours of Corinth, and publishers of Athens, have told me that ten per cent. on the retail price is the customary pay of authors.
I claim that Messrs. Brummell & Hunt should pay me the difference between what they have paid and what ten per cent. would have been, and that on all books sold in the future, they should pay ten per cent. I agreed to less, in full faith in their uprightness, and in the belief, based on Mr. Hunt's statement, and on my own high opinion of their justice and liberality, that I was faring just as others fared.
Messrs. Brummell & Hunt refuse to pay me more than six and two-thirds and seven and a half per cent. either for the past or the future, except on “The Rights of Men.”