Letter from Leonard Woolf to Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky (30/12/1922)

  • Image of typescript letter from Leonard Woolf to Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky (30/12/1922) page 1 of 1

[[1]]

 

[[MS 2750/38/4]]

 

30 December, 1922

 

Dear Kot,

 

Seltzer's advance payment for the Bunin works out at £10-15-3. I enclose a cheque for £8-1-6, as you thought that you and Lawrence ought to get 75% of it ..[sic]  I am quite willing that this should be so in this case, as we came to no previous agreement, but I think that in future we must have a definite understanding. Ordinarily publishers take as much as 50% of American copyrights and payments, when they sell them on <bmx> behalf of authors.  Hitherto, when Virginia*1 or I have done the translation with you, we have simply taken our half share, as translator, and credited it to the Press and the Press itself has taken nothing as publisher. But if we are not translators, it means of course that the Press gets absolutely nothing-- as in this case of Bunin–and since we now have people besides ourselves interested in the press as a business, we obviously cannot do this. Personally I have always thought that in ordinary cases 50% is too much for the publisher to take, but I think that the Press ought to get at least 20% of any payments where it has negotiated the sale of foreign rights.

 

Yours | Leonard Woolf [signature]

 

Endnotes

 

*1- Virginia Woolf

 

 

Rights Statement:

Reproduced with permission from Penguin Random House UK Archive and Library owner of the Hogarth Press archive collection, held by the University of Reading Special Collections. With thanks to the Society of Authors

 

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Source: MS 2750/38/4

Letter from Leonard Woolf to Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky (30/12/1922)

Library:

University of Reading, Special Collections

Woolf sends a cheque which is a part of Seltzer's advance. In response to a previous letter, he explains which shares belong to the press and which shares belong to the translators.
 

 

 

Typescript letter signed by Woolf