Polish royalty

Jan Sobieski (1629-1696) — king of Poland and “Saviour of Western Christendom”. No. The different kind of royalty. Publishing Perspectives brings us a report on an effort in Poland to get the government to legislate a 10% royalty based on the retail price of the book. The Unia Literacka (pron. Oonia Literatzka), the Polish writers’ union, has submitted a proposal to the government, and is in discussions about the proposal to mandate a minimum 10% royalty, calculated on the book’s cover price. The Unia argues “In Poland, both salaried employees and people working under civil-law service contracts are guaranteed a statutory minimum wage. Yet when our readers learn that an author in Poland earns just PLN* 2.87 [or $0.76] from the sale of a single book, they usually react with disbelief.” Now of course one sympathizes with the Polish author, but you can’t really describe writers as “salaried employees” or as “people working under civil-law service contracts”. (Let us leave out of the…