Soren Kierkegaard

sell out in Kierkegaard’s lifetime, and a third edition was not necessary until
1865.
Nonetheless, Kierkegaard earned more money onEither/Orthan on any
other book. The retail price of the first edition had been 4 rixdollars and
72 shillings. Reitzel received the 72 shillings, so Kierkegaard’s gross earnings
for the entire first printing were 2,100 rixdollars. From this sum about 640
rixdollars had to be subtracted for paper and printing, reducing Kierke-
gaard’s earnings to 1,460, but neither was that sum his net income, because
Kierkegaard had also had expenses for his secretary (“my little secretary,
Mr. Christensen”) and for proofreading (Giødwad). There are no surviving
accounts for these expenses, but Kierkegaard elsewhere reported that the
proofreading ofConcluding Unscientific Postscripthad cost him 100 rixdollars,
so an estimate of about 150 rixdollars forEither/Oris scarcely too low, and
this gave the author net earnings of a bit over 1,200 rixdollars.
It was in general more the rule than the exception that Kierkegaard
earned money on his products. From 1838 to 1855 he published forty-
three separate titles, of which thirty-six were through Reitzel, six through
Philipsen, and a single one was from Gyldendal. Thirteen of the titles with
which Reitzel was associated were published on commission, which meant
that Kierkegaard himself negotiated the contracts with Bianco Luno and
paid him directly for paper and printing. When the book was finished at
the press, a certain number of volumes at a time were delivered to Reitzel,
who generally took twenty-five percent of the sales price, though in the
case ofEither/Orhe took only sixteen percent.
Kierkegaard thus had standing business relationships with Luno and with
Reitzel, and by looking at the surviving documentation of the accounts we
can follow the economic fortunes ofEither/Or,The Concept of Anxiety,Pre-
faces,Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions,Stages on Life’s Way,Concluding
Unscientific Postscript,A Literary Review, andEdifying Discourses in Various Spir-
its. Certain documentation is missing with respect to the remaining five
books published on commission—From the Papers of One Still Living,Two
Edifying Discourses,Fear and Trembling,Repetition, and Philosophical Frag-
ments—but there is still enough information for a very good estimate of
Kierkegaard’s earnings.
About half the books published on commission were pseudonymous, and
until 1846, when Kierkegaard acknowledged paternity of these works, he
found it absurd to negotiate directly with Reitzel and Luno and instead
used J. F. Giødwad as his go-between in the negotiations. It is therefore
Giødwad and not Kierkegaard who is named in Luno’s accounts, just as it
was Giødwad who paid for the pseudonymous writings and received money
from Reitzel as the various works were sold. Thus Giødwad signed the