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If you write one of the most popular books in the history of the English language,
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surely you're going to be rich, right?
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Right?
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Welcome to episode 13 of I'll Probably Delete This.
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My name is Will Jauquet.
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And today we're going to finish up the story that we had started in episode 11,
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talking about Daniel Defoe and really his masterpiece that was a groundbreaking book,
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Robinson Caruso.
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It was wildly popular from the start.
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But one of the things we're going to do is we're going to use Robinson Caruso
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to kind of explore what the media landscape was at the time,
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and also to look at kind of what avenues were open to Defoe as an author
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in terms of profiting off of that story.
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So join me now as we learn about Robinson Caruso,
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Daniel Defoe, and the difficult life of an author.
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In late May of 1719, Daniel Defoe was considering a request from William Taylor.
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Taylor's print shop was preparing the plates for its third printing of
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The Life and Adventures of Robinson Caruso.
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And Taylor was asking for another book just like it.
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Defoe was happy to earn more money with his pen.
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He was better at writing than he was at business.
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And he had bills to pay and his family to support.
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Writing another book would be more fun than all the haggling and arguing he did with
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Nathaniel Mist. Defoe thought Mist should be more grateful.
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He had probably kept Mist out of jail a half dozen times over the past year.
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He did this by persuading Mist to tone down criticism of King George and of the government.
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He even pulled a few articles that couldn't be salvaged because they
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just went way too far in terms of tone and criticism.
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In addition to this editorial work, Defoe's job was to translate articles from French papers
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so that Mist could run them in his own papers in England.
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That and he wrote many original articles for Mist.
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Defoe did all this while secretly working on retainer for the royal government,
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almost as a spy inside Mist's paper.
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He both toned down Mist's opposition to the Whig government and he reported back on Mist's
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activities. Defoe was glad Taylor was happy with Robbins Curruso.
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It meant that maybe he could write more novels and do less newspaper and pamphlet writing.
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That type of political writing came with too many risks and Defoe wanted to keep both his freedom
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and his ears. Now at 60 years old,
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the idea of writing more novels and writing less politics appealed to Defoe.
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When Taylor published Robbins and Curruso in April of 1719, Defoe's book capitalized on two strands
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that were popular with the increasingly literate English public.
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First, and most obvious, is the travel adventure story.
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The public loved stories about voyages, so a voyage to Borneo and back,
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or cruising around the world. There were books about both topics.
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It was common for early books to represent themselves as true-life accounts,
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just as Defoe did in Robbins and Curruso. As the book's preface says,
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the editor believes this narrative to be a just history of fact. Neither is there any
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appearance of fiction in it. Defoe was inspired by the real-life story of a Scottish sailor
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stranded on an island off the coast of South America.
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Unlike other adventure stories, Defoe's Robbins and Curruso was much more realistic,
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both in the dangers Curruso faced, in his mental struggles to meet those dangers,
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and in his practical solutions. That's actually one of the most compelling parts of the book at
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times, is the practical things he did to try to survive on an island while all by himself.
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The other strand was books of popular sermons. If you read an abridged version of the novel,
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this is the part that might get edited out. That and the run-in with the pack of wolves on his
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voyage back home to England. My daughter just finished an abridged Penguin Classics version
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of Robbins and Curruso, and they edited out much of Curruso's overt religious reflections.
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But those reflections on God's providence, Curruso's view of his own failings, and his
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conversion to faith, offer a richer and deeper picture than most any popular book of sermons
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did or could. So in addition to capitalizing on those two popular strands, the adventure story
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and then the popular sermons, within kind of English literature, Defoe's book also hit at a
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really interesting time for the business and the practice of publishing.
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Prior to Defoe, in the 1600s English law limited the number of printing presses
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and required a license before a printer could publish any work. This gave those approved
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presses freedom from competition, and the licensing requirement gave the government
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significant direct control over what was published. But in 1695, Parliament refused
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to renew the relevant law. This was the licensing of the Press Act. With the expiration of that law,
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people were free to start competing presses, and presses were free to print what they chose.
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They were free to choose what to print, but not without risk. As we saw in our last episode on
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Defoe, this is episode 11, the risks were real. The author or the printer of a work that criticized
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the monarch or who criticized the monarch or the government could face serious consequences,
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including having his ears nailed to a board while in the pillory. The expiration of the licensing
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of the Press Act freed presses from the need to get a license before printing a work, but also
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meant more competition. Even more, it threatened the presses with piracy, because it was the
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licensing regime that both gave a press the right to print a work, and it prevented other presses
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from printing that same work. With the end of licensing, the question was would every press
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just be free to pirate anything that was printed? Well, the presses persuaded the courts that the
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answer was or should be no. The presses were successfully able to persuade the courts that
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only the original printer should have a right to copy a printed work. The common law gave the
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printer the copyright. The law's expiration meant that writers like Defoe, while in demand,
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were paid upfront a flat fee. They didn't own the copyright to their own work.
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Let's now fast forward past Defoe's time in the pillory in 1703, where he was convicted for
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seditious libel, and we're going to fast forward up to 1710. In 1710, Parliament changed the rules
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again. This time, Parliament passed the Statutes of Anne that placed the copyright with the author
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of the work and not with the printer publisher. It provided that the author had a copyright for
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14 years and allowed the holder to renew that copyright for a second term of 14 years.
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This change in the law seems like very good news for Defoe. Nine years after the change in copyright
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law, Defoe wrote one of the most popular novels in the history of English literature. Robinson
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Caruso was popular from the start. The printer William Taylor sold through the first printing
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of 1,000 copies in less than a month, and before the end of the year, the book was on its fourth
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printing, selling an estimated 8,000 copies. Given its popularity, excerpts and abridged
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versions of the book also came out in 1719. You would think that given the success of Robinson
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Caruso and Parliament's change in the law, that Daniel Defoe would soon be very wealthy.
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But that's not how publishing worked in 1719.
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In the 1700s, the printer publisher still retained the bulk of any financial reward.
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Parliament had planted the seed to change this relationship, but when Defoe wrote Robinson
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Caruso, that seed had yet to sprout. When the seed finally does sprout, it would grow a new
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relationship between publisher and author, and change the balance of power and the allocation
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of financial reward between the two. But that change would come well after the end of Defoe's
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professional career. Robinson Caruso was profitable, but the book was profitable for Taylor
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and for other printers, and not so much for Defoe. We'll cover what we know in terms of how much
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Taylor profited off the book later in this episode. But before that, let's look at Defoe
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and turn to the various ways an author could make money off of a popular story.
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We'll start with royalties. If you write a popular book today, there are many ways to profit from
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your work. The first way is through an advance or royalties. An advance is a prepayment of
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expected royalties, and royalties are just a percentage of revenue that an author gets from
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each copy sold of his or her book. It's the percentage that the author keeps versus what
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the publisher keeps. In the 1700s, author didn't get advances or royalties. Instead, the custom and
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practice was for the author to sell the copyright outright to the publisher. Authors, even in these
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very early days of the novel, or what was becoming the novel, could negotiate over the
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upfront price. But once they sold, first they didn't share the downside risk that the book
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failed and the printer didn't recoup his cost. Second, they also didn't share in the upside.
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If a book sold, like Robinson Caruso did, the author didn't make any more money. The upfront fee
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was it. Defoe sold his copyright to this, his first novel, to Taylor in the same way he would
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sell the copyright to a political pamphlet. Taylor was a prosperous bookseller, who owned
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two separate print shops in London. It's difficult to get any hard figures, but Defoe could have
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gotten as much as £50 for the book. This would have been a pretty good sum for the time. In
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episode 11, we covered a deal Defoe had with a printer, where Defoe received a fee for each
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set of 500 copies printed. This arrangement kind of approximated a royalty, but it was unusual for
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the time. So given the arrangement Defoe made with Taylor, royalties from future sales were out. They
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were off the table. Foreign rights. Another potential revenue stream open to authors is the
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sale of foreign rights. Translate the book and sell it in other countries.
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But that option wasn't available to Defoe or even to Taylor. This is because there was no
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international copyright. The 1710 Statute of Anne was the first copyright law anywhere.
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International copyright didn't exist. Robinson Caruso would quickly get translated into dozens
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of languages, but none of the profit from those sales went to Defoe or even to Taylor. We've seen
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this already in today's story. While working for Mist, Defoe benefited from being able to translate
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and then publish articles he took from French newspapers. Mist didn't pay the French papers
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for use of their articles. Translating and reprinting articles from foreign papers was a
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very common practice. Adaptations. So then what about adaptations? With a popular book today,
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you may have the opportunity to option it for movies or TV, to have it appear on YouTube or in
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some streaming service. The equivalent in Defoe's time would have been a dramatization in the form
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of a play or a puppet show or a pantomime. And because of Robinson Caruso's popularity, plays
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did come out very quickly in 1719 based on the book. But the world's first copyright law
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didn't cover adaptations. Anyone could read Robinson Caruso and make a play or a puppet
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show without having to pay the author of the book or the holder of the rights. This remained true
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in England for more than a hundred years. Let's fast forward to a hundred years in the future
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when Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein in 1818. The idea of Frankenstein's monster
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proves to be much more popular than the book does. The monster makes his way into public
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consciousness not through the 500 copies of the book, which sell only slowly, but instead through
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plays and other dramatizations that quickly captured people's imaginations. Mary Shelley
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received nothing from these, and it had to really struggle to make ends meet for her and
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her family, particularly after the death of her husband. Derivative works.
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So what about derivative works? The Statute of Anne was very narrow in its copyright protection.
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One avenue open to Taylor was to produce derivative works. This could have been illustrated
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versions, abridged versions, or versions aimed at children, and the market would produce all
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of those and produce them very quickly, but neither Defoe nor Taylor played any role in those.
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Before the end of the year, there were two different abridged versions circulating in print
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that cut 100 pages from the book. The Statute of Anne, as I said, was very narrow in its
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copyright protection so that these derivative works didn't violate the copyright. Taylor did
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what he could to protect his copyright and threatened suit against other publishers,
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but it isn't clear that he in fact took anyone to court. It also isn't clear that he would have won.
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The English courts would take a pretty permissive view of the ability of other
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printers to make abridged or modified versions of the same work as long as they added something to
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it and therefore wouldn't have violated the copyright. Serialization.
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I mentioned serialization because it would grow into a really significant way to profit from a
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book. Go back to episodes three and four covering Laura Ingalls Wilder and the start of The Little
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Housebooks. Laura's daughter Rose was targeting serials in the 1930s America as a way to profit
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from her mom's stories. People like Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott famously published
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many of their most profitable and most famous novels as serials first. Even much more recently,
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Andy Weir first published The Martian as a free serialized story on his personal blog.
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Unlike Defoe, in each of those cases the serial came first followed by the book. The serial acted
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as an advertisement for the book that followed. It also was a way for the author to get paid
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hopefully twice for the same work. Like the other avenues, this one also was not a source of profit
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for Defoe and likely not for Taylor either. In 1719, London papers did publish excerpts of
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Robinson Crusoe but it isn't clear they paid anything for those rights. Copyright didn't offer
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clear enough protections and enforcement at the time was weak. So just to review, we went through
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royalties, foreign rights, adaptations, derivative works, and serials. None of them were open to
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60-year-old Daniel Defoe and the question is what was left? Only one avenue was open to Defoe
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from which he could profit and that was to write another book.
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So write another book he did. As we've talked about, Robinson Crusoe was the first novel that
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Defoe wrote but it would be the first of seven or more novels that he would write over the
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rest of his life and arguably it was one of the first novels that anyone has written in English.
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I say that because it has a form that's understandable to the modern reader and it very
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much looks and feels like a novel. It had a consistent narrative with an overarching and
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consistent plot focused on a main character who developed over the course of the book.
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Very few books did this before Defoe. For modern readers, the book still holds up even though it
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was written 300 years ago. To try to capitalize on the popularity of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe
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immediately wrote a sequel. That sequel was The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,
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very creatively named, and Taylor published it in August of 1719, so only five months after he
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printed and put on sale the first 1,000 copies of Robinson Crusoe. Perhaps Defoe was able to get
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more money out of Taylor from the second Robinson Crusoe book but it still was likely less than 100
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pounds. The sequel The Further Adventures was also popular and over the next five years would go
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through four printings in its own right. Defoe and Taylor followed up those first two books with
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another one called Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
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That one came out in August of 1720. It was not a novel but more of a series of essays connected
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to Robinson Crusoe. It didn't sell nearly as well as the first two books. It never became as popular
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or as often read as The Further Adventures and certainly much less popular than Robinson Crusoe
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was. In total, Defoe likely earned 150 pounds or less from the three books, a good sum and equal to
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multiple years of the average craftsman's annual wage. Certainly good money but not enough to make
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Defoe rich, particularly given the way that he spent money. I mentioned earlier that I'd come back
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to Taylor and how much he profited off of the book. Despite the piracy, Taylor still profited
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substantially from Robinson Crusoe and the three sequels, sorry the two sequels. He made 10 times
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more than Defoe did. He likely made more than a thousand pounds. This is even after failing to
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face down other printers, kind of their rampant piracy of the book. Historical conversions of
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money is difficult but to try to put the sum in context, a thousand pounds in 1720 would
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exceed three hundred thousand dollars on the low end in today's dollars and could approach several
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million dollars depending on sort of your scale and your consideration. Defoe for his part was
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never good with his money and was certainly seeking ways to earn more of it. Taylor on the other hand
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was very successful and very profitable. He owned two printer shops. When he died, he ends up dying
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five years after Robinson Crusoe comes out and his estate was worth between forty and fifty thousand
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pounds, a sum far greater than Defoe would ever earn and certainly greater than Defoe's estate was
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worth when he died. Defoe would go on to write a number of other books including Journal of a Plague
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Year and Mole Flanders. None were as popular or had the lasting impact that Robinson Crusoe did.
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In terms of his legacy, Defoe has likely greatly benefited from the rampant piracy first and then
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by the relatively short copyright term. The reason is that this meant that the book was reprinted
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thousands and thousands of times and had reached many hundreds of millions of people. It had firmly
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lodged itself or it has firmly lodged itself into kind of the the canon of important English
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literature. It's never gone out of print and if you haven't read it, I certainly encourage you to.
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I'm going to skip the bibliography on this one. Instead, I wanted to spend just a minute to talk
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about a few reflections on Defoe's life between episode 11 and then this one. Defoe is a really
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interesting character. I wish there was more that was known about his life and as I said in the last
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episode, if anyone finds a really good biography of him and what he was like as a person, I would
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love to see it. So reach out and I'd love to hear about it. But in terms of his career and kind of
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the landscape at the time, there are so many things that remind me of the information age
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that we're in now. So printing was expanding. Also, the individual reach of a single person
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was expanding greatly. There weren't as many gatekeepers but at the same time, there was a
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lot of risk if you screwed up or if you or if you offended the wrong person. So obviously,
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you could end up in jail. As I've mentioned a half dozen times probably, you could end up losing your
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ears. You can end up in the pillory, have things thrown at you. So the risk was real and if that
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happened to you, it was likely to be a big hit to your reputation. Defoe is pretty unique in that
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he was able to survive the reputational hit because a number of people rallied around him.
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They were selling his poems. He had a poem of an ode to the pillory that was being sold while he's
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in the pillory in front of the crowd in London. So he was unique. It ended up being kind of a
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rallying cry for him for a little bit. But even so, he was pretty chastened. It's almost like kind
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of people who were canceled and then come back. He was pretty chastened and ends up working very
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closely with the government. The way we started off, we mentioned that he was a spy for the
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government in Nathaniel Mist's papers and printing house. And he did that. He did things like that,
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like being an agent for the government in trying to work with them in Scotland as Scotland was
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considering whether to join with England or not as one country with one crown. The other thing that
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I wanted to mention is sort of in thinking about this, Defoe was a hot take merchant.
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He got out things quickly. In some ways, he was cranking out articles and posts and pamphlets
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to hit on the news of the day. There wasn't reporting in the way that we think about it.
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Instead, it was people with opinions sort of pontificating about a particular thing or an
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item or whatever was in dispute. Very much like you might see today online, on Twitter or wherever.
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The other thing is there were not these big media companies that acted as kind of gatekeepers
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to what was the news. So, you know, we've got a handful, you go back 30 years or so, there were
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a handful of TV stations, handful of radio stations, you had one or two newspapers, and that was the
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news. It didn't function the same way. It was much more partisan as kind of the age that we're in now,
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very contentious. It was also a little more free-flowing and dynamic. And it seems like
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we are in a very similar media age now. I'll stop there. I've been kind of rambling,
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but if I think about this more, maybe I'll put my thoughts in better order. I sort of freestyled
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this part. So, just to close, I did want to give you all a heads up that I will probably skip a
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week. So, the next episode, I'll have a week off before we have another episode. And then it's
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possible that episodes are going to come out a little less frequently. So, maybe every other
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week instead of every Tuesday. So, join me next time for another episode of I'll Probably Delete
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This, where we get to hear about stories of great storytellers, publishing, and the business of books
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and of media. Happy reading! Thanks everybody!
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If you write one of the most popular books in the history of the English language,
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surely you're going to be rich, right?
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Right?
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Welcome to episode 13 of I'll Probably Delete This.
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My name is Will Jauquet.
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And today we're going to finish up the story that we had started in episode 11,
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talking about Daniel Defoe and really his masterpiece that was a groundbreaking book,
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Robinson Caruso.
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It was wildly popular from the start.
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But one of the things we're going to do is we're going to use Robinson Caruso
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to kind of explore what the media landscape was at the time,
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and also to look at kind of what avenues were open to Defoe as an author
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in terms of profiting off of that story.
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So join me now as we learn about Robinson Caruso,
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Daniel Defoe, and the difficult life of an author.
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In late May of 1719, Daniel Defoe was considering a request from William Taylor.
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Taylor's print shop was preparing the plates for its third printing of
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The Life and Adventures of Robinson Caruso.
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And Taylor was asking for another book just like it.
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Defoe was happy to earn more money with his pen.
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He was better at writing than he was at business.
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And he had bills to pay and his family to support.
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Writing another book would be more fun than all the haggling and arguing he did with
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Nathaniel Mist. Defoe thought Mist should be more grateful.
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He had probably kept Mist out of jail a half dozen times over the past year.
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He did this by persuading Mist to tone down criticism of King George and of the government.
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He even pulled a few articles that couldn't be salvaged because they
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just went way too far in terms of tone and criticism.
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In addition to this editorial work, Defoe's job was to translate articles from French papers
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so that Mist could run them in his own papers in England.
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That and he wrote many original articles for Mist.
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Defoe did all this while secretly working on retainer for the royal government,
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almost as a spy inside Mist's paper.
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He both toned down Mist's opposition to the Whig government and he reported back on Mist's
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activities. Defoe was glad Taylor was happy with Robbins Curruso.
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It meant that maybe he could write more novels and do less newspaper and pamphlet writing.
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That type of political writing came with too many risks and Defoe wanted to keep both his freedom
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and his ears. Now at 60 years old,
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the idea of writing more novels and writing less politics appealed to Defoe.
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When Taylor published Robbins and Curruso in April of 1719, Defoe's book capitalized on two strands
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that were popular with the increasingly literate English public.
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First, and most obvious, is the travel adventure story.
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The public loved stories about voyages, so a voyage to Borneo and back,
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or cruising around the world. There were books about both topics.
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It was common for early books to represent themselves as true-life accounts,
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just as Defoe did in Robbins and Curruso. As the book's preface says,
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the editor believes this narrative to be a just history of fact. Neither is there any
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appearance of fiction in it. Defoe was inspired by the real-life story of a Scottish sailor
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stranded on an island off the coast of South America.
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Unlike other adventure stories, Defoe's Robbins and Curruso was much more realistic,
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both in the dangers Curruso faced, in his mental struggles to meet those dangers,
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and in his practical solutions. That's actually one of the most compelling parts of the book at
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times, is the practical things he did to try to survive on an island while all by himself.
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The other strand was books of popular sermons. If you read an abridged version of the novel,
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this is the part that might get edited out. That and the run-in with the pack of wolves on his
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voyage back home to England. My daughter just finished an abridged Penguin Classics version
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of Robbins and Curruso, and they edited out much of Curruso's overt religious reflections.
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But those reflections on God's providence, Curruso's view of his own failings, and his
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conversion to faith, offer a richer and deeper picture than most any popular book of sermons
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did or could. So in addition to capitalizing on those two popular strands, the adventure story
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and then the popular sermons, within kind of English literature, Defoe's book also hit at a
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really interesting time for the business and the practice of publishing.
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Prior to Defoe, in the 1600s English law limited the number of printing presses
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and required a license before a printer could publish any work. This gave those approved
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presses freedom from competition, and the licensing requirement gave the government
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significant direct control over what was published. But in 1695, Parliament refused
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to renew the relevant law. This was the licensing of the Press Act. With the expiration of that law,
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people were free to start competing presses, and presses were free to print what they chose.
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They were free to choose what to print, but not without risk. As we saw in our last episode on
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Defoe, this is episode 11, the risks were real. The author or the printer of a work that criticized
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the monarch or who criticized the monarch or the government could face serious consequences,
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including having his ears nailed to a board while in the pillory. The expiration of the licensing
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of the Press Act freed presses from the need to get a license before printing a work, but also
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meant more competition. Even more, it threatened the presses with piracy, because it was the
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licensing regime that both gave a press the right to print a work, and it prevented other presses
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from printing that same work. With the end of licensing, the question was would every press
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just be free to pirate anything that was printed? Well, the presses persuaded the courts that the
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answer was or should be no. The presses were successfully able to persuade the courts that
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only the original printer should have a right to copy a printed work. The common law gave the
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printer the copyright. The law's expiration meant that writers like Defoe, while in demand,
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were paid upfront a flat fee. They didn't own the copyright to their own work.
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Let's now fast forward past Defoe's time in the pillory in 1703, where he was convicted for
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seditious libel, and we're going to fast forward up to 1710. In 1710, Parliament changed the rules
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again. This time, Parliament passed the Statutes of Anne that placed the copyright with the author
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of the work and not with the printer publisher. It provided that the author had a copyright for
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14 years and allowed the holder to renew that copyright for a second term of 14 years.
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This change in the law seems like very good news for Defoe. Nine years after the change in copyright
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law, Defoe wrote one of the most popular novels in the history of English literature. Robinson
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Caruso was popular from the start. The printer William Taylor sold through the first printing
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of 1,000 copies in less than a month, and before the end of the year, the book was on its fourth
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printing, selling an estimated 8,000 copies. Given its popularity, excerpts and abridged
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versions of the book also came out in 1719. You would think that given the success of Robinson
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Caruso and Parliament's change in the law, that Daniel Defoe would soon be very wealthy.
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But that's not how publishing worked in 1719.
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In the 1700s, the printer publisher still retained the bulk of any financial reward.
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Parliament had planted the seed to change this relationship, but when Defoe wrote Robinson
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Caruso, that seed had yet to sprout. When the seed finally does sprout, it would grow a new
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relationship between publisher and author, and change the balance of power and the allocation
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of financial reward between the two. But that change would come well after the end of Defoe's
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professional career. Robinson Caruso was profitable, but the book was profitable for Taylor
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and for other printers, and not so much for Defoe. We'll cover what we know in terms of how much
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Taylor profited off the book later in this episode. But before that, let's look at Defoe
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and turn to the various ways an author could make money off of a popular story.
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We'll start with royalties. If you write a popular book today, there are many ways to profit from
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your work. The first way is through an advance or royalties. An advance is a prepayment of
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expected royalties, and royalties are just a percentage of revenue that an author gets from
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each copy sold of his or her book. It's the percentage that the author keeps versus what
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the publisher keeps. In the 1700s, author didn't get advances or royalties. Instead, the custom and
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practice was for the author to sell the copyright outright to the publisher. Authors, even in these
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very early days of the novel, or what was becoming the novel, could negotiate over the
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upfront price. But once they sold, first they didn't share the downside risk that the book
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failed and the printer didn't recoup his cost. Second, they also didn't share in the upside.
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If a book sold, like Robinson Caruso did, the author didn't make any more money. The upfront fee
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was it. Defoe sold his copyright to this, his first novel, to Taylor in the same way he would
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sell the copyright to a political pamphlet. Taylor was a prosperous bookseller, who owned
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two separate print shops in London. It's difficult to get any hard figures, but Defoe could have
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gotten as much as £50 for the book. This would have been a pretty good sum for the time. In
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episode 11, we covered a deal Defoe had with a printer, where Defoe received a fee for each
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set of 500 copies printed. This arrangement kind of approximated a royalty, but it was unusual for
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the time. So given the arrangement Defoe made with Taylor, royalties from future sales were out. They
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were off the table. Foreign rights. Another potential revenue stream open to authors is the
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sale of foreign rights. Translate the book and sell it in other countries.
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But that option wasn't available to Defoe or even to Taylor. This is because there was no
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international copyright. The 1710 Statute of Anne was the first copyright law anywhere.
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International copyright didn't exist. Robinson Caruso would quickly get translated into dozens
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of languages, but none of the profit from those sales went to Defoe or even to Taylor. We've seen
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this already in today's story. While working for Mist, Defoe benefited from being able to translate
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and then publish articles he took from French newspapers. Mist didn't pay the French papers
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for use of their articles. Translating and reprinting articles from foreign papers was a
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very common practice. Adaptations. So then what about adaptations? With a popular book today,
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you may have the opportunity to option it for movies or TV, to have it appear on YouTube or in
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some streaming service. The equivalent in Defoe's time would have been a dramatization in the form
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of a play or a puppet show or a pantomime. And because of Robinson Caruso's popularity, plays
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did come out very quickly in 1719 based on the book. But the world's first copyright law
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didn't cover adaptations. Anyone could read Robinson Caruso and make a play or a puppet
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show without having to pay the author of the book or the holder of the rights. This remained true
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in England for more than a hundred years. Let's fast forward to a hundred years in the future
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when Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein in 1818. The idea of Frankenstein's monster
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proves to be much more popular than the book does. The monster makes his way into public
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consciousness not through the 500 copies of the book, which sell only slowly, but instead through
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plays and other dramatizations that quickly captured people's imaginations. Mary Shelley
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received nothing from these, and it had to really struggle to make ends meet for her and
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her family, particularly after the death of her husband. Derivative works.
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So what about derivative works? The Statute of Anne was very narrow in its copyright protection.
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One avenue open to Taylor was to produce derivative works. This could have been illustrated
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versions, abridged versions, or versions aimed at children, and the market would produce all
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of those and produce them very quickly, but neither Defoe nor Taylor played any role in those.
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Before the end of the year, there were two different abridged versions circulating in print
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that cut 100 pages from the book. The Statute of Anne, as I said, was very narrow in its
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copyright protection so that these derivative works didn't violate the copyright. Taylor did
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what he could to protect his copyright and threatened suit against other publishers,
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but it isn't clear that he in fact took anyone to court. It also isn't clear that he would have won.
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The English courts would take a pretty permissive view of the ability of other
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printers to make abridged or modified versions of the same work as long as they added something to
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it and therefore wouldn't have violated the copyright. Serialization.
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I mentioned serialization because it would grow into a really significant way to profit from a
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book. Go back to episodes three and four covering Laura Ingalls Wilder and the start of The Little
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Housebooks. Laura's daughter Rose was targeting serials in the 1930s America as a way to profit
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from her mom's stories. People like Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott famously published
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many of their most profitable and most famous novels as serials first. Even much more recently,
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Andy Weir first published The Martian as a free serialized story on his personal blog.
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Unlike Defoe, in each of those cases the serial came first followed by the book. The serial acted
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as an advertisement for the book that followed. It also was a way for the author to get paid
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hopefully twice for the same work. Like the other avenues, this one also was not a source of profit
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for Defoe and likely not for Taylor either. In 1719, London papers did publish excerpts of
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Robinson Crusoe but it isn't clear they paid anything for those rights. Copyright didn't offer
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clear enough protections and enforcement at the time was weak. So just to review, we went through
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royalties, foreign rights, adaptations, derivative works, and serials. None of them were open to
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60-year-old Daniel Defoe and the question is what was left? Only one avenue was open to Defoe
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from which he could profit and that was to write another book.
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So write another book he did. As we've talked about, Robinson Crusoe was the first novel that
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Defoe wrote but it would be the first of seven or more novels that he would write over the
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rest of his life and arguably it was one of the first novels that anyone has written in English.
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I say that because it has a form that's understandable to the modern reader and it very
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much looks and feels like a novel. It had a consistent narrative with an overarching and
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consistent plot focused on a main character who developed over the course of the book.
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Very few books did this before Defoe. For modern readers, the book still holds up even though it
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was written 300 years ago. To try to capitalize on the popularity of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe
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immediately wrote a sequel. That sequel was The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,
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very creatively named, and Taylor published it in August of 1719, so only five months after he
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printed and put on sale the first 1,000 copies of Robinson Crusoe. Perhaps Defoe was able to get
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more money out of Taylor from the second Robinson Crusoe book but it still was likely less than 100
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pounds. The sequel The Further Adventures was also popular and over the next five years would go
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through four printings in its own right. Defoe and Taylor followed up those first two books with
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another one called Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
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That one came out in August of 1720. It was not a novel but more of a series of essays connected
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to Robinson Crusoe. It didn't sell nearly as well as the first two books. It never became as popular
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or as often read as The Further Adventures and certainly much less popular than Robinson Crusoe
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was. In total, Defoe likely earned 150 pounds or less from the three books, a good sum and equal to
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multiple years of the average craftsman's annual wage. Certainly good money but not enough to make
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Defoe rich, particularly given the way that he spent money. I mentioned earlier that I'd come back
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to Taylor and how much he profited off of the book. Despite the piracy, Taylor still profited
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substantially from Robinson Crusoe and the three sequels, sorry the two sequels. He made 10 times
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more than Defoe did. He likely made more than a thousand pounds. This is even after failing to
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face down other printers, kind of their rampant piracy of the book. Historical conversions of
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money is difficult but to try to put the sum in context, a thousand pounds in 1720 would
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exceed three hundred thousand dollars on the low end in today's dollars and could approach several
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million dollars depending on sort of your scale and your consideration. Defoe for his part was
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never good with his money and was certainly seeking ways to earn more of it. Taylor on the other hand
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was very successful and very profitable. He owned two printer shops. When he died, he ends up dying
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five years after Robinson Crusoe comes out and his estate was worth between forty and fifty thousand
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pounds, a sum far greater than Defoe would ever earn and certainly greater than Defoe's estate was
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worth when he died. Defoe would go on to write a number of other books including Journal of a Plague
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Year and Mole Flanders. None were as popular or had the lasting impact that Robinson Crusoe did.
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In terms of his legacy, Defoe has likely greatly benefited from the rampant piracy first and then
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by the relatively short copyright term. The reason is that this meant that the book was reprinted
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thousands and thousands of times and had reached many hundreds of millions of people. It had firmly
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lodged itself or it has firmly lodged itself into kind of the the canon of important English
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literature. It's never gone out of print and if you haven't read it, I certainly encourage you to.
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I'm going to skip the bibliography on this one. Instead, I wanted to spend just a minute to talk
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about a few reflections on Defoe's life between episode 11 and then this one. Defoe is a really
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interesting character. I wish there was more that was known about his life and as I said in the last
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episode, if anyone finds a really good biography of him and what he was like as a person, I would
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love to see it. So reach out and I'd love to hear about it. But in terms of his career and kind of
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the landscape at the time, there are so many things that remind me of the information age
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that we're in now. So printing was expanding. Also, the individual reach of a single person
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was expanding greatly. There weren't as many gatekeepers but at the same time, there was a
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lot of risk if you screwed up or if you or if you offended the wrong person. So obviously,
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you could end up in jail. As I've mentioned a half dozen times probably, you could end up losing your
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ears. You can end up in the pillory, have things thrown at you. So the risk was real and if that
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happened to you, it was likely to be a big hit to your reputation. Defoe is pretty unique in that
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he was able to survive the reputational hit because a number of people rallied around him.
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They were selling his poems. He had a poem of an ode to the pillory that was being sold while he's
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in the pillory in front of the crowd in London. So he was unique. It ended up being kind of a
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rallying cry for him for a little bit. But even so, he was pretty chastened. It's almost like kind
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of people who were canceled and then come back. He was pretty chastened and ends up working very
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closely with the government. The way we started off, we mentioned that he was a spy for the
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government in Nathaniel Mist's papers and printing house. And he did that. He did things like that,
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like being an agent for the government in trying to work with them in Scotland as Scotland was
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considering whether to join with England or not as one country with one crown. The other thing that
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I wanted to mention is sort of in thinking about this, Defoe was a hot take merchant.
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He got out things quickly. In some ways, he was cranking out articles and posts and pamphlets
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to hit on the news of the day. There wasn't reporting in the way that we think about it.
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Instead, it was people with opinions sort of pontificating about a particular thing or an
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item or whatever was in dispute. Very much like you might see today online, on Twitter or wherever.
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The other thing is there were not these big media companies that acted as kind of gatekeepers
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to what was the news. So, you know, we've got a handful, you go back 30 years or so, there were
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a handful of TV stations, handful of radio stations, you had one or two newspapers, and that was the
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news. It didn't function the same way. It was much more partisan as kind of the age that we're in now,
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very contentious. It was also a little more free-flowing and dynamic. And it seems like
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we are in a very similar media age now. I'll stop there. I've been kind of rambling,
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but if I think about this more, maybe I'll put my thoughts in better order. I sort of freestyled
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this part. So, just to close, I did want to give you all a heads up that I will probably skip a
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week. So, the next episode, I'll have a week off before we have another episode. And then it's
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possible that episodes are going to come out a little less frequently. So, maybe every other
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week instead of every Tuesday. So, join me next time for another episode of I'll Probably Delete
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This, where we get to hear about stories of great storytellers, publishing, and the business of books
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and of media. Happy reading! Thanks everybody!
