But this is only a part of his earnings. There are, in addition, the American sales, the serial rights, film and dramatic rights, and cheap popular editions.
It will go hard with a best-seller if he does not clear £5,000 from a single novel.
If he is industrious amd productive he will write two a year; he would like. to write three, but he dare not do so fon fear of spoiling his market: The public soon wearies of a writer whose name it too often hears.
But there are very few novelists who make £10,000 a year. Twenty? No. Fifteen? Well, hardly. Say ten. Nevertheless there are from 30 to 40 who make considerably more than £1,000. Many of the remainder earn scarcely a living. George Gissing, now regarded as a classic, was glad for many years to receive £50 for each of his long novels. Henry James, a_ still greater writer, tried to write plays because his novels brought so little <grist_ to the mill.
Still, in the vast majority of eases genius and even talent quickly get their reward. A! writer of stories must be either very great or very small who cannot earn £700 or £800 a year.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.