SIR,-1 would like to thank Janus for his kind words
on behalf of authors. It is strange that, though writers earn their living by the published word, so little appears in print about the hardships imposed upon them today. Harold Nicolson, in Marginal Comment some' time ago, expressed his indignation that young authors should be kept waiting for two years before their accepted work was published. In my case, and I think it is true of many, over three years have elapsed since the acceptance of a book by a large firm of publishers, but as yet I have been given no reason to hope that any date has been set for publication. What is worse, not a penny of advance payment has been received by me.
It is hard for a person in my position to combat a feeling of frustration when every week he sees pouring from the presses reprints of the classics, or new editions of the works of established authors who cannot, on the basis of present taxation, receive much benefit from increased royalties. We are given to understand that the two difficulties which confront publishers today are the scarcity of paper and the obduracy of the unions to which compositors and printers belong. I sometimes wonder what a member of a union would think if, having spent the greater part of a year on a piece of work, he was asked to wait indefinitely for payment.
An author without influence must take the risk of being rejected by publishers' readers who may be "creatures of whim and bias," but once past that barrier he surely has the right to expect that his work may be judged by the reading public. After all, we authors are the geese, and, though our eggs may not be pure gold, they may have sufficient mIrket value to keep us alive and producing, if they are offered for sale and not kept on the publishers' shelves until they have lost all freshness and
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