June 27 Saturday – Frank Bliss wrote a two-page typed letter to Sam concerning relinquishing contract rights for $50,000, and Collier’s possible entrance selling sets of Mark Twain’s books by subscription.
When Mr. Jacobs and myself called on you last Thursday it was with the expectation of considering a price at which the shares of the A.P. Company might be sold to you at; but you immediately told us that while you had offered to buy the Company that you had changed your mind; that you did not wish to load yourself up with the cares of running it, or the management of it, or of the winding up of its affairs; that all you did care about was to get hold of the contract existing between Mrs. Clemens and the Company and proceeded to make still another proposition, which was that the A.P. Company be allowed to sell all of the 2500 sets of the “Hillcrest” Edition (and later a condition not to sell at less than $36.50 a set); to deliver you the plates of the Uniform Set, fill all orders for the twenty-third volume, destroy all the old plates and old books except such as may be required for any orders already taken; that no further royalty be paid you or the Harpers on the “Hillcrest” Edition and that you were to pay the American Publishing Company $10,000 [MTP].
Note: Bliss continued for another page and a half of single-spaced typed text taking issue with the terms offered, and then declining. Bliss then offered three “suggestions” for continuing: First, a $50,000 payment and permission to sell their stock of “Hillcrest” sets on hand as payment for their giving up their rights. Second, “concessions made by the various parties interested,” including an arrangement with Mr. Collier of of his royalties to be paid to the A.P. Co. in excess of 20,000 sets sold, also leaving “existing contracts between Mrs. Clemens and this Company as they are. We going on with the ‘Hillcrest’ Edition…” And third: since they had not violated their contracts that they be allowed to continue under the present contracts. The issues between Twain, Bliss, Collier and Harpers had become quite tangled. Sam saw a great opportunity to enhance his income by allowing Collier to sell sets as well as the other two firms.