Jane Austen's World

By Brenda S. Cox

“Mr. Murray’s Letter is come; he is a Rogue of course, but a civil one. He offers £450-but wants to have the Copyright of MP. & S&S included. It will end in my publishing for myself I dare say.–He sends more praise however than I expected.”–Jane Austen to Cassandra, Oct. 17, 1815, about her new publisher, John Murray, wanting to buy the copyrights of Emma, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. She self-published instead.

Publishing Choices Today

Having recently published my own book, I’m very aware of the choices authors have today. We might publish through a traditional publisher, who pays all the costs of publishing, gives the author a percent of the profits (perhaps 5-18%, usually on the lower end), and possibly an advance against those profits.

Or we might self-publish, paying all the expenses ourselves, and getting most of the profits. A range of variations fall between those options.

“Hybrid” authors do some of both, selling some of their books through traditional publishers and self-publishing others.

The author generally keeps the copyright, while assigning certain rights to the publisher, though in some situations, like work-for-hire, the author may agree to sell the copyright to the publisher.

Publishing Choices in Austen’s England

In Jane Austen’s England, authors also had essentially two options. They could sell their copyright to a publisher for a lump sum. The publisher would then bear all the expenses and take all the profits.

Or, the author would publish the book on commission, which was more similar to self-publishing today. The publisher would publish the book, paying the expenses of publishing and distribution. However, the author had to repay the publisher those costs out of the income from the book, plus a commission of about 10% of sales. If the book did not make enough money to cover the costs, then the author had to pay the publisher the rest of the costs out of his or her own pocket.

Jane Austen was what we might today call a “hybrid” author, taking both options. She sold the copyright of two of her books to publishers. The others she published on commission, essentially self-publishing them.

How Jane Austen Chose to Publish Her Books

Hybrid Publishing

The first book Jane Austen sold to a publisher was Susan, which was later published as Northanger Abbey. Like today, agents helped to place books with publishers. Jane’s brother Henry usually acted as her agent. But for this first book, Henry’s lawyer, William Seymour, was the agent who sold the copyright to publisher Benjamin Crosby on Jane’s behalf, in 1803 for £10. Crosby advertised the book once, but never published it. In 1809, Jane attempted to get the manuscript back from Crosby, in a letter in which she signed herself as M.A.D. (Mrs. Ashton Dennis). Crosby threatened to take legal action if she tried to publish the book herself, and he demanded the £10 back. Jane didn’t have that money, which would have been half her annual allowance.

Finally, in the spring of 1816, Henry, acting as her agent himself, bought it back on her behalf for the £10. Austen revised it and changed the name, since a novel called Susan had come out in the years in between. (Modern authors still have to watch for novels with the same name as theirs.) She added a preface apologizing for its being out of date. It was not published until after her death, when Henry got it published on commission.

Publishing on Commission (similar to today’s Self-Publishing)

Austen’s second book to be accepted for publication, and the first that was actually published, was Sense and Sensibility. Her brother Henry, acting as her agent, got the publisher Thomas Egerton to publish it. Out of the profits, Jane had to pay for the production, advertising, and commission. Fortunately it did well. If it had not, she might have had to pay as much as £180, which she certainly could not afford. She had faith in this “baby,” though. In a letter in 1811 (April 25), when she was correcting the proofs of Sense and Sensibility, she wrote to Cassandra, “I am never too busy to think of S&S. I can no more forget it than a mother can forget her sucking child.”

Egerton printed 750 copies in October, 1811, a large print run for a first-time author. Two positive reviews launched it well, and by July, 1813, the copies were sold out and Jane had earned £140 pounds in profits. A second edition was published in October, which continued to give Jane income until 1817.

Selling the Copyright (more like modern, traditional publishing)

Unfortunately Jane Austen did not make such a good choice for her second published novel, Pride and Prejudice. Perhaps she had been discouraged because her father had previously offered it to a publisher, who chose not to look at it. (Though I must say, her father wrote possibly the worst query letter ever! All it told the publisher was that the novel was about the length of Burney’s Evelina, with no further information. They declined to see it.)

In any case, rather than again risking money she didn’t have, she sold the copyright of Pride and Prejudice to Thomas Egerton. Based on the success of Sense and Sensibility, they paid her £110. Then they paid all the costs of publishing and took all the profits. Egerton published the first edtiion in January of 1813, a second edition that fall, and a third edition in 1817. They made much more money than Jane did on Pride and Prejudice, which of course was quite popular.

Back to On Commission (which Austen calls publishing for herself)

For the rest of her books, Jane went back to taking the risk of publishing on commission, where she was responsible for the costs.

Mansfield Park was published on commission in May of 1814. The first edition sold out in six months. She made somewhere between £310 and £340 on it.

Emma was published in December 1815 (dated 1816). Austen turned to a more prominent London publisher, John Murray, to publish Emma. This may have been because Egerton did not want to do a second edition of Mansfield Park, or possibly because Murray was more prestigious. (Egerton was basically a military publisher; Henry apparently had connections there.) Murray offered to buy the copyrights for Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park, for £450 total. Austen thought this was too low. She wrote to her sister telling her of Murray’s offer, saying he was “a Rogue of course, but a civil one” (Oct. 17, 1815).

So Jane Austen published Emma and a second edition of Mansfield Park on commission, paying the costs herself. She and the publisher decided to print 2,000 initial copies of Emma, Austen’s largest initial print run. Unfortunately, Mansfield Park did not sell well this time, and only about three-quarters of the copies of Emma had sold by February, 1817. At that point, after taking out the costs for publishing both books, Austen received only £38.18.

Northanger Abbey and Persuasion: When Jane Austen died in 1817, she left her manuscripts and copyrights to her sister Cassandra. Cassandra and Henry negotiated with John Murray to publish her last two complete novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, in a four-volume edition at the end of 1817 (the books were dated 1818). This included a biographical notice of the author, written by Henry. He publicly revealed for the first time that Jane Austen was the author of all six novels. (The others were identified as “by a Lady” or “by the author  of . . .” the previous books.) Further income from the books went to Cassandra.

So, Jane Austen essentially self-published her novels, in terms of the expenses. The notable exception was Pride and Prejudice, for which she sold the copyright, taking less risk but substantially reducing her profits. Her first foray into selling a copyright was even more unsuccessful, since the publisher didn’t even publish Northanger Abbey. However, they were no doubt chastised when Henry, after buying back the manuscript, gleefully informed them that it was by the author of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice!

Risks and benefits were as hard to gauge back then as they are now.

A professor writing for the British Bank has estimated that Jane Austen’s lifetime income from her books was around £631 before tax, or £575 after tax. That’s just a little more than the average yearly salary for a country clergyman. It’s hard to make clear comparisons to today, but one estimate claims it is equivalent to over £45,000 in today’s money, or about $56,000.

Not too bad for an obscure clergyman’s daughter from the countryside. She would have been glad to know that continued profits from her books helped support her beloved sister.

Jane Austen’s Published Books

Do you want to know how the books were made and circulated? This series by historian Kathryn Kane, beginning with “The Making of Regency Books,” answers that question. It was a huge job to produce a book, with most of the work done by hand. And books were very expensive. Most people could only afford to get them from circulating libraries, if at all. So the discussions of the libraries of Netherfield and Pemberley emphasize the wealth of the Bingleys and Darcys. Novels were published in three volumes, at an average of seven shillings per volume. The equivalent price today for one three-volume novel would be $90!  For about the same price, readers could join a circulating library and read as many novels as they wished, a volume at a time.

Kane finishes with a deep dive into Sense and Sensibility’s writing and publication. 

Most importantly, in the long run, Austen’s books were published. The manuscripts were not left to moulder somewhere due to lack of money or publishers. Because Jane got them published, they were republished, again and again through the centuries, and give us much joy today!

Sources

Jane Austen’s Works 

Jane Austen’s Income 

Jane Austen Statistics 

Brenda S. Cox is the author of Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England. 

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