Robert A. Heinlein In Dialogue with His Century

52. Heinlein complains specifically of this set of practices in his analysis to Blassingame of the proposed Doubleday contract on 07/29/64: “… Lurton, I have been trying to tell you for years that Doubleday scamps the trade edition, then milks the subsidiary rights, all to the disadvantage of the author…” In this contract, the extent to which Doubleday proposed to “negotiate” terms with its own subsidiaries and present them as fiats to the author scandalized Heinlein:

At the moment I am so vexed at their unreasonable demands—the fashion in which that contract has been rigged throughout to clip the Author without ever quite telling him how he is being clipped—that I am strongly disposed to reject it in toto and withdraw the properties. Therefore I shall let it sit a few days until I have cooled down on the subject.…

Here are a few of the many things I object to:

In several places it says that the publisher can negotiate with himself (i.e., with a subsidiary division or affiliate of Doubleday) and decide how much profit to show on some right or permission—then I have to accept 50% of that rigged profit as my compensation. Lurton, this is as ridiculous as it would be for Ginny and myself to negotiate between ourselves as to what the return would be, then announce it to Doubleday—and Doubleday would have to pay me whatever we decided.

I will not accept any such blind provision, whether it be for the Science Fiction Book Club, the Dollar Book Club, or any other of the various front names for Doubleday. Either each such contract must be negotiated with me later, on terms agreeable to me—or the exact nature and terms of the sub-contract must be incorporated into the main contract now. I will not give blind permission for Doubleday to negotiate with Doubleday, and thereby bind me—at my expense.

Doubleday puts in a paragraph under which Doubleday may at any time (even immediately after publication) cease publication of the trade edition, remainder any stock—below cost and at no royalty to me, if they so choose—and again “negotiating” such sale with a subsidiary part of themselves!—and nevertheless retain forever all subsidiary rights!

I won’t hold still for any part of this! I will not permit remaindering in less than two years after publication; any less time than that means they haven’t tried. Nor will I agree that they can remainder by selling to themselves “below cost”—and thereby cut me out. But in particular I will not permit them to retain any rights whatsoever if they choose to let the trade edition go out of print.

And so on. Editor David Hartwell commented (in a marginal note to this manuscript, ca. mid-2012) that he knew of Doubleday’s practices as of 1967, a few years later: “Doubleday would print, fill all advance orders and then pulp anything left upon sale to the book club—in all the genres where they ha[d] a library subscription program.”