# Primary Sources on Copyright - Record Viewer
Diderot's Letter on the book trade, Paris (1763)

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France : Mss. Fr. (Naf) 24232 n°3

Citation:
Diderot's Letter on the book trade, Paris (1763), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

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            Chapter 1 Page 3 of 45 total



provided by common everyday books, together with the sales in small numbers of a
few authors suited to certain people, which sustained the traders’ enthusiasm. Assume
that the book trade is the same today as it was then; assume that there is still this
harmonious balance of slow and quick-selling works, and you may as well burn the
booksellers’ code, for it is useless.
      But no sooner had one individual’s business opened up a new path than the crowd
followed. Publishing houses soon multiplied in number, and those essential works of
general utility, those works whose steady sales and daily returns encouraged people
to enter the book trade, became so common and of such poor quality that more time was
needed to sell a small number than to sell through the whole edition of another work.
The profit of quick-selling works became virtually non-existent, and the tradesman
did not make up for these losses through works with guaranteed but slower turnover,
because nothing could change their nature or widen their appeal. The risk of certain
ventures was no longer compensated for by the guaranteed success of others, and almost
certain ruin was gradually leading booksellers to timidity and inactivity, when we saw
appear a few of those rare men who will always have a place in the history of publishing
and letters; who, animated by a passion for art and full of the noble and reckless
confidence which their superior talent inspired in them, professional publishers, but
also men of deep literary learning, able to confront any difficulty, undertook the most
daring of projects and would have completed them with honour and profit, were it not
for a disadvantage whose identity you doubtless suspect, and which takes us a step closer
to the unhappy necessity of recourse to the authorities in a matter of trade.
      Meanwhile, the disputes of fanatics, which always lead to the publication of an
infinite number of ephemeral and quick-selling works, temporarily replaced the old sources
of income, which no longer brought any returns. A taste is sometimes rekindled among a
people for a certain kind of knowledge, but only ever at the expense of another taste,
just as in our own day we have seen the rage for natural history replace that for
mathematics, without us knowing which branch of knowledge will tomorrow take the place of
today’s fashion; this sudden enthusiasm drew forth from the publishers’ stores a few
works which were rotting away inside them; but it also condemned an almost equal number of
other works to rot in their place. And then as the religious disputes subsided, taste
declined for polemical works; people came to see how empty they were, and were embarrassed
at the importance they had attributed to them. Time does not go on producing remarkable
and daring artists without end, and it was not long before those whom I was describing to
you encountered the peril of great ventures, once they saw greedy and mediocre men suddenly
ruin the hopes that sprang from their industriousness, and steal from them the fruit of
their labours. Indeed, no sooner had the Estiennes, the Morels and other skilled publishers
produced a work which they had prepared at great expense and whose execution and good choice
assured them success, than the same work was reprinted by incompetent men who had none of
their talents; who, having incurred no expenditure, could sell at a lower price; and who
enjoyed the fruit of their competitors’ outlay and hard work without having run any of their
risks. What happened?

    


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Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) is co-published by Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, UK and CREATe, School of Law, University of Glasgow, 10 The Square, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK