Nowadays, copyright is firmly established. In the 18th century, on the contrary, there was no such copyright, which made reprints of works a common practice of book printers. This reprinting gave the authors a new form of distribution and readers access to literature. However, these reprints were also heavily criticised, especially by authors, because they lost income opoortunities this way and complained about the countless errors in their reprinted works. Portman devotes his dissertation to this topic and analyses the “reprinting society” in southwest Germany.
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Book History and Print Culture Network 