Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/356

322 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 water-mark has been used in paper made purposely for the book: thus the words "Mecanique Cœleste" appear in the water-mark 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 copper-plate 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.

(389.) Perhaps the best advice to an author, if he publishes on his own account, and is a reasonable person, possessed of common sense, would be to go at once to a respectable printer and make his arrangements with him.

(390.) If the author do not wish to print his