The same tendency is observable in play sales. Here the normal royalty in England and America has become fixed at approxi mately 5% of the gross weekly receipts up to 1500 or $2,500; 71% on the next 1200 (or $1,000) and o% on all gross weekly receipts above ii,000 or $5,000, with an advance on account of these royalties, payable on the signing of the contract, of from oo to £200. If the play is sold first in England, the English manager claims a share in the American rights and the film rights —and vice versa if the play is sold in America. If the author is in a strong position he claims and gets a separate royalty in each country for each right, with somewhat lower royalties for transla tion rights on account of the cost of translation and possibly adaptation. He even reserves the royalties obtainable on his amateur rights, broadcasting rights, and book publication rights.
When moving pictures first presented themselves to the authors as a possible source of suddenly augmented income, an attempt was made to apply the royalty system to payment per foot of film for what soon came to be known as "film rights": but the diffi culties of collection and checking became such that the system has been practically abandoned for outright payment. However, the preference for profit-sharing has brought forth a new form of royalty payment that may presently prevail—i.e., payment on signature of contract of an advance on account of a royalty of usually from 5 to 1 o% on the "bookings," i.e., the purchases of exhibitors of the rights to show the film for varying periods.
A normal agreement for publication of music is i o% per copy of the retail selling price ; half royalty on copies sold for export; half of any broadcasting fees, and half of the moneys received by the publishers as royalties on mechanical reproduction rights. These royalties on mechanical contrivances for the performance of musical works were altered in Great Britain in 1928 by order of the Board of Trade from 5% to Earlier Systems.—The royalty system became general only in the last century, although before that authors were occasionally paid a stipulated sum for the first impression of a book, and a further sum if a further impression were called for. Samuel Sim monds paid Milton 15 for Paradise Lost and agreed to pay a further 15 at the end of the sale of each of the first three impres sions. Richard Baxter records that he arranged with Thomas Underhill and Francis Tyton to publish his Saints' Everlasting Rest, a quarto of nearly i,000 pages, for a payment of 110 for the first impression and £20 for every subsequent impression up to 1665.
Sidney Lee records that the highest price known to be paid before 1599 to an author for a play by the manager of an acting company was Lii. "A small additional gratuity, rarely exceeding los., was bestowed on a dramatist whose piece on its first pro duction was especially well received, and the author was cus tomarily awarded, by way of benefit, a certain proportion of the receipts of the theatre on the production of a play for the second time. The 19 plays which may be set to Shakespeare's credit
between 1591 and 1599 combined with such revising work as fell to his lot during those nine years cannot consequently have brought him less than £200 or some £20 a year. Between 1599 and 1611 his remuneration as both actor and dramatist was on the upward grade. The fees paid dramatists rose rapidly. The exceptional popularity of Shakespeare's work after 1599 gave him the full advantage of the higher rates of pecuniary reward in all directions. The 17 plays that were produced by him between that time and the close of his professional career could not have brought him less on an average than £25 each, or some L400 in all." But the pound of that day had over five times its present value. Later on prices improved and Fielding, for example, received I from Andrew Miller for Amelia, while Gibbon received two-thirds of the proceeds on his history.
Edward Chapman, of Chapman and Hall, in a letter to Forster (1837) said: "There was no agreement about Pickwick except a verbal one. Each number was to consist of a sheet and a half, for which we were to pay 15 guineas, and we paid him for the first two numbers at once, as he required the money to go and get married with. We were also to pay more according to the sale, and I think Pickwick cost us altogether £3,000." Forster adds : "I had always pressed so strongly the importance to him of some share in the copyright that this at last was conceded in the deed above mentioned (though five years were to elapse before the rights should accrue) and it was only yielded as part considera tion for a further agreement entered into on the same date (Nov. 19, 1837) whereby Dickens engaged to write a new work (Nick leby) the first number of which was to be delivered on the 15th of the following March and each of the numbers on the same day of each of the successive 19 months, which was also to be the date of the payment to him by Chapman and Hall, and 20 several sums of LI5c, each for five years' use of the copyright, the entire ownership in which was then to revert to Dickens." On July 2, 1840, Dickens wrote to Chapman and Hall: "Your purchase of Barnaby Rudge is made upon the following terms : It is to consist of matter sufficient for ten monthly numbers of the size of Pickwick and Nickleby, which you are, however, at liberty to divide and publish in 15 smaller numbers if you think fit. The terms for the purchase of this edition in numbers and for the copyright of the whole book for six months after the publication of the last number are 13,00o. At the expiration of six months, the whole copyright reverts to me." (C. BN.) See Copinger's Law of Copyright (6th ed., 1927) ; Michael Joseph, The Commercial Side of Literature (1925) ; Stanley Unwin, The Truth about Publishing (5926).