ABSTRACT
Researchers may be put off looking at the economics of literary production because the skills of interpreting what are essentially business documents, and extracting from ehern da ta which can produce sound statistical analysis are not common among literary critics. The uniqueness of each surviving archive and the need to learn how the systems of the firm worked mean that generalizations are inadequate and only intimate knowledge based on time and patient exploration of the archive can help the researcher decipher the precise path of the book in production. Having said that, each system has a similar function, and each firm needs to know and record for future reference certain facts and figures, from the profit and loss of the business to legal agreements and correspondence with authors. Once that is fully understood it is easier to define a search strategy. In this chapter I will first look at what quantitative information is available on the book trade, how to find publishers' archives, and what information they contain; then at the problems and pitfalls of data collection and handling. This will lead on to an explanation of some basic statistical measures which have been used in this book.
