The book will be in two editions: first two thousand cloth bound, price $1, to enable my friends to pay the cost of the undertaking; and second, ten thousand copies, paper bound, a neatly printed wire-stitched pamphlet, to be sold at meetings, and passed about among workingmen and women; this is the form for which I hope to get a million or two circulation, and I have put the price so low that nobody will suspect me of making money—15 cents a copy, or ten copies for a dollar. This 15 cent price for a single paper copy is a price for meetings and book-stores—I cannot mail the book for that, because, including postage, wrapping, and overhead, it costs about 15 cents to handle an order in my office. What I ask you to do is to order at least 10 paper copies to give to your friends, and in addition a cloth copy for your library. I will take a gamble and say: place a $2 order, for one cloth and 10 paper copies, and when you have read the book, if you don’t find it worth distributing, you may send back the whole lot, and I’ll send back your money. I ask for a prompt response, as I want to advertise the book, and haven’t the money. Both editions will be ready for shipment by the time your order gets back to me.
Our reprint of “The Moneychangers” has been ready for a couple of months, and if you haven’t seen it, here is a reminder. This novel, first published in 1908, tells the story of the panic of 1907, how and why it was brought about by the elder J. P. Morgan. I do not recommend it as a great work of literature; reading it over, I found many crudities, some of which I remedied. But I will guarantee it a lively story, full of facts about Wall Street which the American people do not yet understand.
Also, my wife has published a new volume by Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz, author of “The Parlor Provocateur.” The new volume is called “Letters of Protest,” the price is $1 cloth and fifty cents paper. The book is full of that burning indignation at social injustice, combined with motherly tenderness, which has made Mrs. Gartz the bewilderment of the prosecuting officials of Los Angeles county. They want so much to send her to jail, but they don’t quite dare! I was talking the other day with a prominent physician of Los Angeles, and he mentioned his intimate friend, the president of the Better America Federation, the propaganda society of big business here in California. “He doesn’t love you, Upton,” said the physician, “but Kate Gartz is the real one who gets his nanny.”
The money which has come in from our “Loan Plan” has gone into the printing and binding of “Bill Porter” and “The Moneychangers,” a part payment on a new edition of “The Cry for Justice,” a new binding of “The Jungle,” and finally, this circular. More money is needed for a new printing and binding of “The Profits of Religion,” and for advertising the “Letters to Judd.” Also my novel, “Sylvia,” is out of print, and I’d reprint it if I could afford the luxury. So I tell you again about this “Sinclair Loan Plan.” Those who believe in my work and want to promote it lend me what they can afford, and the money serves as working capital, to pay for the new plates and stock of books which a publishing business has to keep on hand. The lenders receive a certificate of indebtedness, and have the right to buy each year a quantity of my books at half the retail price. Thus, if you lend ten dollars, you can get $5 worth of books for $2.50. These books must be ordered in one shipment, so as to save handling costs; under the Loan Plan you may place one such half-price order every year. The saving takes the place of interest on your money; it amounts to 25% interest—a pretty good rate, but not so high as millions of poor farmers are having to pay to national banks all over the country—see my “Letters to Judd”!
I want to cover all the details of this Loan Plan, so as to avoid having to write long explanations. If you have already come in under the plan, and have your certificate of indebtedness, you may order books once in the year 1926, to the amount of one-half of your loan. Thus, if you have loaned $10, you may order $5 worth of books for $2.50; you can get, for example, one cloth and ten paper copies of “Letters to Judd,” one cloth “Mammonart,” one paper “Bill Porter,” and one paper copy of Mrs. Gartz’s book, all for $2.50. I will throw in a copy of my wife’s “Sonnets,”—and if you know any place in the world where you can get as much value in books for the money, I do not!
If you are not at present at subscriber to the Loan Plan, you are invited to join. Send $12.50, and you will receive a certificate for a $10 loan, with the privilege of getting your money back at any time on thirty days’ notice. Also you will receive $5 worth of books, and will have the privilege each year of ordering another $5 worth of books for $2.50. Most of my readers say they don’t want the certificates, but I send them just the same; paste them in your autograph album, and some day they may be worth the price in that form, and without hurting the publishing business!
Sincerely,
Upton Sinclair.
P. S. We have received from our German publishers, the Malik Verlag of Berlin, five stately volumes, the “Collected Novels of Upton Sinclair.” From Gossizdat, the State Publishing House of Moscow, we have a list of various editions of our books which have been issued in Soviet Russia; counting, not new printings, but separate publications under different titles, there is a total of sixty-nine. Michael Gold, recently returned from Russia, writes: “The sort of people who in America know Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan, in Russia know Upton Sinclair.” We are advised by the Japanese translator of “The Jungle” that the book has just been issued, but the government compelled the publisher to recall all copies, and cut out the last chapters, dealing with Socialism. The Japanese translation of “Mammonart” is about to appear. From Warsaw comes an offer from a large publishing house to issue twenty of our books in a cheap library, at .95 zloty per volume, about thirteen cents American. A Czechish publisher applies for all books not hitherto issued. We have a review of “Mammonart” which was broadcasted from the radio station of the Labour Party of Australia; also a letter from a Ukrainian writer, telling how our plays are being acted there, and our novels made into movies. We have established book-store agencies in London, India and South Africa, and we learn that readers are circulating our books in Java, Honduras, and Iceland. We await returns from the U. S. A.