Correspondence from Dorothy Olsen to an Unknown Correspondent

[DRAFT]

[circa 1925?]

The enclosed prospectus [for The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] is a general prospectus. The idea is to issue separate prospectuses for each volume as it goes to press giving a précis of the contents of that volume. The book already exists in MS. and contains over 600,000 words, the author is revising this draft. It appears that many people who would normally subscribe to such a work are afraid to do so because of a number of recent fiascoes. We want to capitalize the production in such a way as to guarantee subscribers against possible loss. This can be done in several ways.

(1) Induce a capitalist to undertake the whole production.

(2) Get sufficient subscriptions to enable us to have the production guaranteed by a bank.

(3) Secure the capital required by the sale of either the American book rights or several rights

or both.

For this last purpose the proposition is to sell the M.S. as it stands—the editor or publisher to chose the material he requires (10,000 or 200,000 words) according to his needs.

With regard to the sale of the big work, we rely on

(1) the reputation of the author.

(2) the fact of the book being "privately printed" in Paris (great care will however be taken not to raise trouble with the Customs.

(3) various stunts to be brought off by the author during the period of publication.

The above plan is part of a larger scheme. We possess

a) stock of printed books to value of some £40,000

(b) The copyrights of the above

(c) Unpublished M.S.S. representing the work of the past ten years

(d) plays, scenarios etc

(e) the good will of the whole business.

The activity of the author was producing between £2000 and £3000 a year at the outbreak of the war, which caused complete temporary suspension of the business. We were not able to reconstitute it for lack of working capital. It slowly recovered from 1919 to 1922 then scored a striking success in the publication of the Diary of a Drug Fiend, but this was immediately spoilt by the attacks of the gutter press. This can however be turned into an asset given adequate capital and proper business management.

Nothing is required to realize enormously on all of these assets but the partnership of a business man with some knowledge and understanding of the publishing business prepared to give his time to its development and to invest in it a sum of money which has been calculated by experts as from £1500 to £4000.

[137]