At the height of his success, a newspaper calculated that Rudyard Kipling was earning about a dollar per word. Shortly thereafter an autograph-seeker, having long tried to acquire his signature without success, wrote to the Nobel Prize-winning author:
"I see you get $1 a word for your writing. I enclose a check for a dollar. Please send me a sample."
Kipling complied, returning a postcard signed with a single word: "Thanks."
[According to another unlikely version of this story, the resourceful autograph collector sold the anecdote for two dollars -- and sent Kipling half the profit (less postage of course).]
Sources
E. Fuller, 2500 Anecdotes
