BUSINESS RELATIONS 449
When an author arranges with a publisher or print- "Author's er to issue a book at author's expense, such editions ®<J»tions" being usually known as "author's editions," great care should be taken to make such arrangements only with publishers or printers of known and high char- acter and to base them on a complete and exact writ- ten contract, defining particularly the amount of commission or royalty to be paid by or to the author, or the expenses to be allowed before reckoning "half profits." Publishers of good repute make such ar- rangements in the case of books not likely to show adequate commercial profit, but there are publishers and printers who make a business of such transac- tions with authors without adequately providing to give the author the best possible market, and these, cannot always be expected to deal fairly with him. Arrangements made directly between an author (or publisher) and a printer as such, are scarcely within the scope of this work, but it may be said briefly that a printer usually has a mechanic's lien on plates he has Printer's lien made or sheets he has printed (but not on plates used by him unless he has made them), until the bills are paid; and that he may not demand payment until the work has been completed, or in case of its destruction by fire or otherwise, previous to complete delivery, in the absence of contract obUgation for advance or par- tial payment.
The compulsory license system, often miscalled Compulsory "the royalty plan," — discussed in England in 1877 as license the Farrer proposal and in America about 1890 as the ®^^ *'" Pearsall-Smith scheme, — is provided by legislation under which any publisher may publish a work without consent of the author provided he pays a roy- alty as specified or stipulated in the law, as ten or five per cent or a fixed sum per copy. This system has un- fortunately been adopted in the new American code,
