[[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