£500 FOR THE AUTHOR OF “JEW SUSS”

Shannon News, 10 February 1928, Page 4

£SOO FOR THE AUTHOR OF “JEW SUSS”

REVELATIONS OP THE WRITER OP A “BEST-SELLER.”

The astonishing. fact that Dr. Feuohtwangcr, the young author of “Jew Suss,”, the year’s mostwidely-discuss-od novel, has made practically nothing out of tho sfjles of his book, despite its sensational success, is .revealed by Mr. G. A. Atkinson, the Sunday Express kincma correspondent. The total sum which he has received to date is stated to be not more than £SOO, although more than 100,000 copies have been sold in the British Empire alone at 10s each.

Dr. Feuchtwanger, who admitted that the sum he has received is small, had no great confidence in the work, and made such arrangements with the publishes and managers that the bulk of the profit falls to them, though some thing may accrue to him from stage and screen right. Even in those connections, however, he has parted with valuable rights to publishers and managers. The continued sale of the book was one ol the sensations of the Christ mas book season at Home. The novel, although it was first published in November 1926, lay stacked on its publisher’s shelves and unnoticed in the book-, shops until three months later.A highly favourable review in a literary journal and another by Mr. Arnold Bennett, in the Evening' Standard, awakened public curiosity. Twenty editions have since been published. “The editions have run from 2000 to 10,000 copies each, averaging perhaps about 5000,” said a member of the publishing firm to a Sunday Express representative yesterday. “We are now printing to the capacity of the presses, and the end is not yet. in sight. “Overseas, so far as the Empire is concerned, the largest sale of “Jew Suss” are. in Australia, with South Africa a close second. Tho Canadian market is coupled with-the American and while the demand in America is

not quite up to that of England, the book at present is definitely one of the best sellers there as well.’ A cheap edition is hardly to be expected before late in 1928.”

Few books'- earn for their authors more than £soot). The author of a first novel is fortunate if he makes £IOO out of it, but Mrs. Alice Hegan Rice, who wrote “Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,” a little volume of 20,000 words, earned a royalty of 20 per cent, on' the price of each of 500; ; 000 copies, or more than £1 a woi’d. Sir Walter Scott made £200,000 during his writing career, and Mark Twain £300,000. Book and serial rights under present .arrangements in Ameica as well as in England, greatly increase an author’s earnings from a single-work, as for example Mr. Lloyd George’s “Memoirs,” which it is said brought him £99,000. A novel is a still richer mine. Mr A. S. M. Hutchinson is believed' to have received £70,000 for the book rights of /‘ If Winter Comes. ’ ’