Book-selling

[wolfinthewood]

The typical British author now earns just £4,000 a year from writing, compared with £6,333 six years ago. –The Guardian, 10/03/2007.

Num reditus librum editorum et venditorum itidem parte plus quam tertia deminuebant?

Have the incomes of the publishers and booksellers likewise declined by more than a third? – A question expecting the answer no.


BOOKE-SELLER: Honest man what booke lacke you?
MAN: I must buy a certaine booke but I cannot hit of the name of it.
BOOKE-SELLER: Is it in verse or in prose?
MAN: No no, it is a historie. Have you not some pretie little booke to read in the chimnie corner?
BOOKE-SELLER: There are the seven sages of Greece, there are the seven wise maisters of Rome: and here are the seven wise men of Gotham, who drownded the Eele in the sea.
MAN: That is the very same that I seeke for.
BOOKE-SELLER: It is finely bound in Calfes* leather sir.

John Eliot (fl. 1589–1593)

from The Parlement of Pratlers in Ortho-epia Gallica (1593)


*‘calf’ was a slang term for a fool


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