ABSTRACT
The publishing of books is—and always has been—a matter of buying and selling: the publisher buys from authors and artists the right to reproduce their work in printed form (and, increasingly, towards the end of the twentieth century, in other ways—audio, visual, electronic). The publisher then sells, through many channels, as many copies of that work as customers can be persuaded to acquire. Where publishing differs from other commercial enterprises is in the nature of what is bought and sold. No book is exactly the same as another; nor is a book indispensable to survival, nor (some would claim) a necessary ingredient of a happy life. For some centuries possession of books was the privilege of a minority and in England it was only in 1870 that Forster's Education Act offered to everyone the opportunity of learning to read. Most publishers, therefore, have been motivated by desires other than that of making money, and this is especially true of the publishers of children's books.
