[lnrdgmz]

> The German proliferation of knowledge created a curious situation that hardly anyone is likely to have noticed at the time. Sigismund Hermbstädt, for example, a chemistry and pharmacy professor in Berlin, who has long since disappeared into the oblivion of history, earned more royalties for his "Principles of Leather Tanning" published in 1806 than British author Mary Shelley did for her horror novel "Frankenstein," which is still famous today.

In the absence of copyrights, and with plagiarism being rampant (as the article claims) how could authors command favorable royalty agreements? Could a rival publisher not just print the same book, sans royalty agreement, and undercut the original publisher?

[incompatible]

The printers would have been able to sell fresh material, and perhaps the payments to the authors were insignificant if the volume was high enough. Competitors would also have had to replicate the work of typesetting and printing, which would take a while.