Editing Conger (syndicate)

The '''conger''' was a system common in [[Bookstore|bookselling]] in 18th- and early 19th-century England, for financing the printing of a [[book]].  The term referred to a [[syndicate]] of booksellers, mostly in [[London]], who bought shares to finance the [[book]]'s printing. Each member agreed to take so many copies for sale themselves, and the final profit was split in proportion to the members' initial financial input.<ref> F. A. Mumby, ''Publishing and Bookselling,'' rev. ed.1954, p 141</ref>   Their names all appeared on the title pages as co-[[publisher]]s, though one of the major publishing houses usually took the lead in setting the deal up.

Prior to the [[Statute of Anne]], the Conger (often seen capitalized) also had an effect on [[copyright]]. After the printing became common, publishers took the position that having purchased a work from an author, the [[History of copyright|right to control]] its publication continued permanently. Courts supported the claim via precedent, until the Statute was passed early in the 18th century, after which it was law that literary works went into the [[public domain]] after a fixed time set by statute. <ref>F. A. Mumby, ''Publishing and Bookselling,'' rev. ed.1954, p 139-40, Based on [[Augustine Birrell]], ''Seven Lectures on the Law and History of Copyright in Books'', 1899 </ref>

This system seems to have been mostly used in the financing of major projects – for example, multi-volume works such as [[encyclopedia]]s. Shares were often subdivided and re-sold, so the actual balance of ownership became very convoluted.

The Conger system was also, in effect, a wholesaling system which controlled the distribution of popular books. The Conger syndicate met regularly from the 1690s, holding private auctions at which books could be bought wholesale for resale either to the public or to regional booksellers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Feather |first1=John |title=The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century England |date=1985 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=0 521 30334 6 |pages=2-3}}</ref> The system handled over 170,000 books, to the value of nearly £37,000, between 1695 and 1705.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hodgson |first1=Norma |last2=Blagden |first2=Cyprian |title=The notebook of Thomas Bennet and Henry Clements (1686-1719) |date=1956 |publisher=Oxford Bibliographical Society |location=Oxford |page=84}}</ref>

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[[Category:Book publishing companies]]
[[Category:Bookshops of the United Kingdom]]