£500 FOR THE AUTHOR OF “JEW SUSS.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20310, 19 January 1928, Page 10

£SOO FOR THE AUTHOR OF “JEW SUSS.”

REVELATIONS OF THE WRITER OF A “ BEST-SELLER.” The astonishing fact that Dr Feucht wanger, the young author of “ Jew Suss,’ the year’s mostwidely-discussed novel, has made practically nothing out of the sales of his book, despite its sensational success, is revealed by Mr G. A. Atkinson, the Sunday Express kinema 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 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 publishers and managers that the bulk of the profit falls to them, though something may accrue >o him from stage and screen rights. Even in those connections, however, he has parted with valuable rights to publishers and managers. The continued sale of the book was one of the sensations of the Christmas, book season at Home. The novel, although it was first published in November. 1926, lay stacked on its publisher & shelves and unnoticed in the bookshops until three months later. A highly favourable review in a literary ournal and another bv 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 publisnuu 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 close second. The Canadian market 's coupled with the American, and while the demand in America is not quite up to that of England, the book at present ,s definitely one of the best sellers there as well. A cheap edition is hardly to be cxnected before late in 1928.” Few bonks earn for their authors more than £SOOO. 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 eacli of 500,000 copies, or more than £1 a word. Sir Walter Scott made £200.000 during his writing career, and Mark Twain £300,000. Book and serial rights under present-d-av arrangements in America as well as in England, greatly increase an author s earnings from a single work, as for example Mr Llovd 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 jf “ If Winter Comes.” ‘