Hatfield Court

Hatfield

Nr Leominster

Herefordshire

HR6 0SD

01568 760333

October 1999

Molly Hope

BBC Worldwide

80 Wood Lane

London W12 0TT

Dear Molly Hope

Thanks for yours of 28 September.

It would be most helpful, in seeking to understand the background to your letter, if you could let me know, as per your para. no.2:

Which other contributors would be involved?
What would be their share of the revenue?

This is partly for my own understanding and partly for a magazine article I’ve been asked to write.

Although at first sight the BBC’s offer of 5% would seem to suggest that the author would get 65p per copy sold for a retail price of £13, compared to the £1.30 which one would expect from a publisher, or about half, on further analysis this figure of 5% seems to me misleading. The reality, according to my calculations, is that you propose that the author would get 5% x 17.5% x 66% of the retail price of £13, in other words 7.5p per copy sold.

I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’ve got my sums wrong, but I think you’ll agree that at first sight this does seem to be unfair, about twenty times less than one would expect from a book publisher, and it was this I asked Greg Dyke to comment on.

I’ll be better able to understand the situation on receiving an answer to my questions in my para.2.

With best wishes

Jeremy Sandford

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