Now this
overplus ought to be accounted for to the author--and I believe
it usually is so by all respectable publishers.
388. In order to prevent the printer from privately taking
off a larger number of impressions than he delivers to the author
or publisher, various expedients have been adopted. In some works
a particular watermark has been used in paper made purposely for
the book: thus the words 'Mecanique Celeste' appear in the
watermark of the two first volumes of the great work of Laplace.
In other cases, where the work is illustrated by engravings, such
a fraud would be useless without the concurrence of the
copperplate printer. In France it is usual to print a notice on
the back of the title page, that no copies are genuine without
the subjoined signature of the author: and attached to this
notice is the author's name, either written, or printed by hand
from a wooden block. But notwithstanding this precaution, I have
recently purchased a volume, printed at Paris, in which the
notice exists, but no signature is attached. In London there is
not much danger of such frauds, because the printers are men of
capital, to whom the profit on such a transaction would be
trifling, and the risk of the detection of a fact, which must of
necessity be known to many of their workmen, would be so great as
to render the attempt at it folly.
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