And John Locke sent in some thoughts on the large trove of Munsey cheques from which we’ve run any number of samples in recent months.
“Weinberg used to auction batches of those checks,” John says, “at Windy City and Pulpcon. Sadly, they contain an enormous quantity of data that would be priceless in pulp research, but it’s all been scattered to the wind.”
Yeah, dates sold, titles changed — lots of info.
Kevin Cook — noted book and pulp collector — agrees, but he adds an interesting extra wrinkle he noticed: “The other thing that the checks tell us is how much the author was paid, word-rate.
“For example, did you notice the increase George Allan England received for ‘Beyond the Great Oblivion’ compared to ‘Darkness and Dawn‘?
“Obviously the popularity of the first novel dictated that the readers wanted a sequel and Munsey was willing to pay more for it.
“Good for England; one can hardly ever complain when an author gets paid more money for his writing.”
