Profits of French Novelists.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 176, 30 October 1886, Page 5 (Supplement)

Profits of French Novelists.

As the human demand for instruction is less ardent than the demand for amueement, the pecuniary reward of even the luckiest novelist aeeme alight. We hear of fortunes made in Prance by novelists like M. Zola and M. Daudet. Why is similar luck 80 very, very rare in England ? Why do M. Zola and M. Daudet do so much better than our Englishmen of letters, like Mr Trollope, who was also a_ man of business ? Thi8 is a mystery. No economist has fathomed it. Certainly the French system of publishing novels is infinitely more simple than the English system. Novels are usually sold in one volume, at a price rather over half a crown, say three shillings and sixpence, adding the expense for a plain binding. Of this halfcrown the author receives a royalty— four pence or five pence, or only twopence, according to his popularity and the demand for his books. Say he sells 80,000 copies of a novel (and M. Ohnet, M. Zola and M. Daudet often eell far more), and he makes about £1,400 at a royalty of fourpence. This is exclusive of the price paid for the Berial publication of the tale as thefeuilleton of a newspaper. Most French newspapers have their novel running, and, on the whole, itwillappearthatasucceEifulFrench novelist has rather a profitable business, especially as he often dramatizes his tale and reaps the rich rewards of the theatre. But though the facts are patent, no one has yet discovered who buy the 80,000 or 120,000 copies of •* Sappho" or " Serge Panine." I never saw a Frenchman buy a novel at a railway station, or read anything bat a newspaper. This, then, is the great myBtery. Bufc it is certain that their halfcrown books do sell, somehow, and it is certain that the British novel's sale is limited by brief and accidental demand of the circulating libraries.