From the late 16th to the 18th centuries, books were published by subscription in English-speaking areas including Britain, Ireland, and British America.
Subscriptions were an alternative to the prevailing mode of publication, whereby booksellers would buy authors' manuscripts outright and produce and sell books on their own initiative.
[1] Writers who did not organize subscriptions would usually sell their manuscripts at low prices to booksellers, who would then produce and distribute the printed book.
According to the literary scholar George Justice, subscription was a descendant of patronage, whereby writers would depend on the financial support of a single person to produce literature.
Undertakers also marketed the book to new potential subscribers, sometimes using a "proposal" or "prospectus" which might give the customer a sample of what the finished product would look like, or otherwise simply advertised it.
[12] By the 18th century, contemporary commentators began to see subscription as, in the terms of scholar Thomas Lockwood, "merely a respectable kind of scam".
[18] In a 1931 article, literary historian Sarah Lewis Carol Clapp reported that she had discovered 87 books published by subscription.
[21] Subscribed-for books include an edition of Paradise Lost published by Jacob Tonson in 1688 and (according to Samuel Johnson) John Dryden's The Works of Virgil.
[23] Frances Burney published Camilla (1796) by subscription and initially wrestled with the idea, considering the method a form of charity.