THE PAY OF AUTHORS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2046, 11 May 1893, Page 42

THE PAY OF AUTHORS.

The controversy concerning the remuneration of authors has brought out some very interesting particulars from a note writer.

IN ENGLAND.

It is said that Mr Robert Liuis Stevenson commands £20 per thousand words for his contributions of fiction to periodicals, and I believe Mr J M. Barrie (author of that charming novel, " The Little Minister," and of a play in which Mr J. L. Toole is having a great success, "Walker, London") received £37 for a story of a page in length, published in the Illustrated London News. Dr Conau Doyle, author of " Micah Clark " and " The White Company," who has^made a great name by his detective stories under the heading of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," in the Strand Magazine, recently made a contract for 12 more of these tales, for which he gets £1000 (Euglish rights only). Mr Gladstone was paid, it is said, £250 for an article in the Nineteenth Century, which comes ont at about 6d a word. Mr James Payn, I believe, gets but lOgs for his delightful page of " Notes " in the Illustrated London News every week. As ordinary journalism this is not bad pay, though I could quite imagine a still higher price being thought not excessive for matter so good.

IN AMERICA.

Literary remuneration rules higher in America than in England. For a short story which I contributed to au English periodical some time ago I received in England under £10, from America £20, and I nearly always expect to get higher rates from the States than at home for any journalistic writings. The enactment of international copyright has, of courae, opened the American field to writers in England, but it has to be remembered that it also preserves native American authors from a very dangerous form of competition, since, before the act of Congress, any American publisher could reprint, without fee, the writings of the most able European authors, which must have made it very hard for new writers in the States to get an innings.