Your favour of the 25th inst. gives me to understand that while you think my opera The Flying Dutchman worth the considerable cost of publication (a fact of which I am myself well assured), you do not think it worth the honorarium which you customarily pay for operas. This surprises me greatly, for I cannot understand how one could be willing to expend considerable capital upon an article which one doubted to be worth its purchase money; yet it goes to confirm a long and sadly cherished conviction of mine that an original German opera, launched under auspices however favourable, is not such sound business for a German publisher as any French work, even one with so ambiguous a history as Halévy's Charles VI. Now that I see my worst fears confirmed by the proprietors of the most respected and richest firm of music dealers in Germany, I take it as an indication that I shall do better for the present not to offer my opera elsewhere but to hold it back, and herewith take the liberty of informing you that I shall take no further steps to get my work published till its increasing success at the theatres has raised your estimate of its publication value. Be that as it may, I am determined not to place this opera in the hands of any publisher except for a substantial honorarium, since I greatly dislike the idea of condemning a publisher to the grave convinced that he has obtained a sound bargain, a conviction that he can evince only by paying the author as handsomely as his resources permit.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 97