Johnson) published "The Poets of Great Britain" in
1777-83. Each of the 109 volumes cost six shillings (compared
to the usual guinea or more). The Railway Library of novels
(1,300 volumes) costs 1 shilling apiece only eight decades
later. The price continued to dive throughout the next century
and a half. E-books and POD are likely to do unto paperbacks
what these reprints did to originals. Some reprint libraries
specialized in public domain works, very much like the bulk of
e-book offering nowadays.
The plunge in book prices, the lowering of barriers to entry
due to new technologies and plentiful credit, the
proliferation of publishers, and the cutthroat competition
among booksellers was such that price regulation (cartel) had
to be introduced. Net publisher prices, trade discounts, list
prices were all anti-competitive inventions of the 19th
century, mainly in Europe. They were accompanied by the rise
of trade associations, publishers organizations, literary
agents, author contracts, royalties agreements, mass
marketing, and standardized copyrights.
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