Letter to Andre Deutsch (15 October 1963)
The first letter to lay out the whole plan: a novel serialized in eight installments in Esquire, with hardcover and paperback rights sold to Dial and Dell for $125,000 before a word was written. Mailer promises his British publisher first crack at the book once it is finished.
Writing to André Deutsch — principal director of Andre Deutsch Limited, his British publisher — Mailer lays out for the first time the bold stroke by which he means to escape his financial impasse: a novel published in eight ten-thousand-word installments in Esquire, with Scott Meredith having brokered hardcover and paperback rights to Dial and Dell “for an incredible sum” — $125,000 — before a word was written. (He had talked Putnam’s Walter Minton into releasing him for the one book.) He defers any contract with Deutsch until the novel is done but pledges “first and complete crack at the book,” and worries over having to surrender the British paperback rights that Corgi had handled. The letter is candid about money and about the gamble: “Now all I have to do is write a first-rate novel in eight months, and I can tell you this gives me pause.”