Abstract
Some authors have argued that reform of British copyright law during the eighteenth century broke the Stationers' Company monopoly over the English book trade, and the resulting competition was a driving force behind the expansion of British book production during the enlightenment. We analyse a new dataset on eighteenth-century book prices and author payments, showing that the legal changes were associated with no reduction in prices and only a temporary increase in payments to authors. Other economic factors led to a gradual reduction in the booksellers' mark-ups, but there is no evidence that the legal reforms diminished their monopoly power.
"It is, perhaps, not considered through how many hands a book often passes, before it comes into those of the reader; or what part of the profit each hand must retain, as a motive for transmitting it to the next."
From Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791)
"The fraud of some old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of book-selling., men who do not. labour in an honest profession."
From Milton's Areopagitica (1644)