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Dawn, issue 11, combined with The Imaginative Collector, issue 1, November 1950
Page 4
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(4) Three dollars has been the asking price for almost every science fiction book for years, regardless of how putrid the story within that book might be, or how short. (And some of them have been utterly putrid and far too shory, although the cynics in the audience might claim otherwise and prononce this a good thing). Apparently it was a case of everyone following the leader---the first few books were pegged at three dollars to get as much money as possible out of the fans and still keep within their price range, and all those who came into the act later followed suit. There have been certain exceptions of course and certain reasons for them. Two recent volumes sold a six dollars at the one extreme and another sold at a dollar-seventy-five at the other extreme. The publishers knew many public libraries and book collectors (as well as professional dealers) would go for their bibliographical volumes, hense the six dollar price tag. Another exception are the anthologies: their prices are generally higher because they contain so much more wordage then novels, and because there are so many more authors to pay off. A word about the authors pay: the usual and standard cut to the scribbers is ten percent of the retail copy price, that they collect thirty cents for every three dollar copy sold. When thet have a story in a anthology ,different arrangements are made; sometimes they collect a percentage of the author's ten percent, and sometimes they receive a flat sum for the use of their story, say fifty dollars, with the provision that if the book enjoys an enormous sale, they may collect additional dollars. I don't know of course whether or not the fantasy firms hew to this standard royalty scale , or whether some do nd some do not. Their monetary arrangements are probably one of their most closely guarded secrets. But I do know that if they pay the standard rate, then it costs exactly the same to buy a brand new novel wrirren especially for them as it does to buy the cheap, old hack serials that many houses have been publishing in book form these last few years. The rather small sale of maybe 3000 copies will help explain why authors re not sending them brand new novels, but it fails to explain why these firms are printing and selling worthless science-fiction serials and novels when far better material can be had for the same price. It has always been a mystery to me why they so consistently pick downright bad stories, when some extremly good ones can be had from the same magazine. The only answer which comes readily to mind is that they are not paying the standard royalty rate, that they are shopping for serials and novels pegged at a small, flat sum, and hence can not buy anything worthwhile. If this is true, they not only have a monumental gall to charge three dollars, but each reader who pays the price is a sucker of the first water. Studying the announcements and catalogs of each fantasy house you can quickly see which firms are picking top-flight stories consistently, and which are dredging the bottom of some of the cheaper pulp magazines. (By "cheaper" I mean merit and story value, not price.) But oddly enough there is a startling exception to this picture. A few months ago one of the standard New York publishers entered the science
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(4) Three dollars has been the asking price for almost every science fiction book for years, regardless of how putrid the story within that book might be, or how short. (And some of them have been utterly putrid and far too shory, although the cynics in the audience might claim otherwise and prononce this a good thing). Apparently it was a case of everyone following the leader---the first few books were pegged at three dollars to get as much money as possible out of the fans and still keep within their price range, and all those who came into the act later followed suit. There have been certain exceptions of course and certain reasons for them. Two recent volumes sold a six dollars at the one extreme and another sold at a dollar-seventy-five at the other extreme. The publishers knew many public libraries and book collectors (as well as professional dealers) would go for their bibliographical volumes, hense the six dollar price tag. Another exception are the anthologies: their prices are generally higher because they contain so much more wordage then novels, and because there are so many more authors to pay off. A word about the authors pay: the usual and standard cut to the scribbers is ten percent of the retail copy price, that they collect thirty cents for every three dollar copy sold. When thet have a story in a anthology ,different arrangements are made; sometimes they collect a percentage of the author's ten percent, and sometimes they receive a flat sum for the use of their story, say fifty dollars, with the provision that if the book enjoys an enormous sale, they may collect additional dollars. I don't know of course whether or not the fantasy firms hew to this standard royalty scale , or whether some do nd some do not. Their monetary arrangements are probably one of their most closely guarded secrets. But I do know that if they pay the standard rate, then it costs exactly the same to buy a brand new novel wrirren especially for them as it does to buy the cheap, old hack serials that many houses have been publishing in book form these last few years. The rather small sale of maybe 3000 copies will help explain why authors re not sending them brand new novels, but it fails to explain why these firms are printing and selling worthless science-fiction serials and novels when far better material can be had for the same price. It has always been a mystery to me why they so consistently pick downright bad stories, when some extremly good ones can be had from the same magazine. The only answer which comes readily to mind is that they are not paying the standard royalty rate, that they are shopping for serials and novels pegged at a small, flat sum, and hence can not buy anything worthwhile. If this is true, they not only have a monumental gall to charge three dollars, but each reader who pays the price is a sucker of the first water. Studying the announcements and catalogs of each fantasy house you can quickly see which firms are picking top-flight stories consistently, and which are dredging the bottom of some of the cheaper pulp magazines. (By "cheaper" I mean merit and story value, not price.) But oddly enough there is a startling exception to this picture. A few months ago one of the standard New York publishers entered the science
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