In the nineteenth century publishers on both sides of the Atlantic had five ways of paying authors:
1. Commission (the author retained his or her copyright, but had to bear the costs of printing, binding, and advertising the work);
2. Half or three-quarter profits (the publisher bore production costs, which he then charged against the book; since liability for losses was split between publisher and author, so were the profits);
3. Outright purchase of an author's copyright, the practice of the House of Tauchnitz in acquiring Continental rights for supplying British novels for railway station bookstands;
4. Short lease or short run (the publisher bought the right to print the work for a definite period of time, or for a specified number of copies);
5. Royalty system of varying percentages to the author for different editions--perhaps 25 per cent for a triple-decker, 10 per cent for an American cheap edition, 15 per cent for a London cheap edition, and as little as 3d. a copy for a colonial edition.
Related Materials
- Nineteenth-Century British and American Copyright Law:
- Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century International Copyright Conventions
- Dickens's 1842 Reading Tour: Launching the Copyright Question in Tempestuous Seas
- Dickens's 1867-68 Reading Tour: Re-Opening the Copyright Question
- A Canadian Satirist Looks at Nineteenth-Century British and American Copyright Law
- How Nineteenth-Century British and American Books (Considered as Physical Objects) Differed
Created 5 January 2001
Last modified 10 August 2013