Sales and finances

Chapter 15
Costing

In the foregoing sections an attempt has been made to throw light on all aspects of book production in the Officina Plantiniana. In this part of the study it is necessary to consider how the masters of the Golden Compasses calculated the cost price of their books; which of the many items of expenditure detailed in the preceding sections were taken into account when arriving at this figure - which in turn determined the selling price.

Many of the books Plantin printed were commissioned. For a number of these there are records in his accounts or correspondence of the prices quoted to the clients. These prices were usually expressed per ream of printed paper.1. Sometimes it was specified how much of the figure represented the cost of paper, how much the pressmen's and compositors' wages;2. and naturally the prices varied according to

the size of the run and the technical difficulty of the order.1. However, these particular figures are of only relative usefulness; they include Plantin's profit margin, which is not usually specified, so there is no means of determining the actual cost prices.

In the years 1563-67, however, during his partnership with the Van Bomberghen family, Plantin kept careful records of how much was spent on the production of each book and how these costs were subdivided:2. one of the earliest examples of industrial costing.3. Two items always appear in these records: the price of the paper and the wages paid to compositors and pressmen. In many cases this is the only expenditure noted. Occasionally there are records of other costs, such as authors' fees or the amounts spent on purchasing copies of books for reprinting; fees for translations, the compiling of indexes, and similar work; the cost of privileges, and so on. Compared with paper and wages these other expenses were always relatively small.

The relationship between the two chief items fluctuated from book to book and depended on the quality of the paper used and the number of copies printed. Wages formed a larger percentage of costs when paper quality was low and the run small, but even then paper practically always cost more than wages. Some figures are given on pp. 382-384.

Although illustrations were relatively costly, their expense could often be spread over various editions. For example, a Dutch translation of the Latin Vesalius-Valverda was issued in 1567, illustrated with the same plates. The Sambucus Emblemata was a best-seller that went through numerous editions. Plantin must have foreseen this: in calculating the cost of the first edition of 1564 he indicated that the illustration costs need only be entered once in the accounts as the wood-blocks would henceforth be available for future editions.1.

But even when costs could be spread in this way, illustrated works remained expensive for both publisher and buyer. Plantin sold his 1581 edition of Guicciardini's Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi both with plates (81 engraved maps of towns and provinces, together with some representation of Antwerp monuments) and without. Customers who simply wanted the text paid only 2 fl. 10 st.; those who wanted the plates as well had to pay 7 fl.2.

It is not without interest to note what the customer had to pay in the few cases - in practice nearly always breviaries and missals - where he had the choice between an edition with woodcuts and one with copper engravings. The quarto breviary of 1575, for example, with eight large illustrations, was priced at 3 fl. for the copies with woodcuts (in fact seven woodcuts and one copper engraving) whereas the copies with eight intaglio prints cost 4 fl. For the quarto breviary of 1587, with ten illustrations, the prices were 5 fl. and 6 fl.3.

When costing Plantin always included paper, compositors' and pressmen's wages, illustrations and, where appropriate, author's or translator's fees, etc. in his calculations, as indicated in the examples given below. He did not include the wages of proof-readers, collators, and his sales staff; the purchase and making of typographical material and equipment (presses, punches, matrices, cast type), and the use of the workshop; ink and vermilion; leather for ink-balls; candles for lighting; the charcoal for heating and for the furnace.

ABC avec la civilité puerile, in ?, 15641.

(250 copies; 5½ quires - very cheap paper)

Cost price per copy: ¼ st.

Horatius, 16mo, 15642.

(1,250 copies; 11 quires - medium quality paper)

Cost price per copy: just under ⅞ st.

Hadrianus Junius, Nomenclator, octavo, 15673.

(1,550 copies; 44 quires - medium quality paper)

Cost price per copy: just over 5¼ st.

J.B. Porta, Magia Naturalis. (Dutch edition), octavo, 15655.

(1,250 copies, 19 quires - medium quality paper).

Cost price per copy: just over 1½ st.

Pierre Savonne, Instruction et manière de tenir livres de raison, quarto, 15671.

(800 copies, 40 quires - good quality paper)

Cost price per copy (calculated for a run of 700):5. just under 8¼ st.

Valerius Flaccus, 16mo, 15656.

(1,000 copies, 6½ quires - medium quality paper)

Cost price per copy: just under 1 st.

Wages exceeded cost of paper in exceptional cases only, as in the following examples:

Index librorum Officinae Plantinianae, octavo, 15667.

(300 copies - poor quality paper)

Index seu specimen characterum Plantini, quarto, 15671.

(200 copies, 16 folios - good quality paper)

Cost price per copy: 1¼ st.

The above figures are for non-illustrated books. In editions that included woodcuts or copper engravings, illustrations became the costliest item.

J. Sambucus, Emblemata, octavo, 15643.

(1,250 copies, 16 quires, 139 woodcuts - good quality paper)

Cost price per copy: just under 6 st.

Vesalius-Valverda, Vivae imagines partium corporis humani, folio, 15664.

(600 copies, 25½ quires, 42 copper engravings - very good quality paper)

Cost price per copy: approx. 1 fl. 6½ st.

It would have been difficult for Plantin to allocate such costs with any accuracy to the various books that came off his presses and he never attempted to account for them by entering up estimated figures or percentages. In so far as these items, difficult to assess but quite considerable, are omitted, Plantin's costing system was incomplete and deficient, but he certainly allowed for these unrecorded general expenses (they amounted to roughly 20 to 25 per cent of the specified costs) when fixing his selling prices.1. They must be borne in mind when comparing the costs entered in the accounts and the price to customers. Plantin's profit margin was always appreciably less than people are wont to deduce from the figures.

Wages as part of the running costs

In an earlier chapter the basis on which wages were calculated for the ‘gouverneurs’, compositors, pressmen, and collators was discussed. What these workers received on average per day, week, and year was subsequently dealt with. It is now necessary to look at this aspect from the point of view of the employer. In the press the authors' manuscripts were turned into printed pages; this primary activity directly engaged most of the staff, and so the wages paid to these men represented the larger part of all the wages paid out by the masters of the Golden Compasses. This raises the question of what percentage of total running costs these wages represented.

It is possible to reconstruct Plantin's expenditure and income for the year 1566.2. The compositors' and pressmen's wages amounted to 4,141 fl. 3½ st., that of the collators to 99 fl. 9 st., while the bonuses, mostly paid to the compositors and pressmen, came to 55 fl. 17 st. Compared with this the proof-readers received only 294 fl. 10 st. and the shop assistants 225 fl. This sum of 4,296 fl. 9½ st. paid to the compositors, pressmen, and collators made up roughly one third of the total expenditure for that year. Only one item is in any way comparable - the money spent on paper, which slightly exceeded

the wages. All other items are as nothing compared with these two: the making of punches and matrices, the casting of type, the equipping of the press, book illustration, authors' honorariums, the privileges, and so on. Of course expenditure varied from year to year. Items that were relatively insignificant in 1566 rose considerably in other years. In the time of Jan i Moretus, for example, book illustration used up a lot of money and represented an increased percentage of the expenditure total. Nevertheless in the eleven years of the period 1600 to 1610 inclusive, Jan i Moretus spent only 13,530 fl. 8½ st. on this item,1. compared with 57,885 fl. 4½ st. for compositors' and pressmen's wages.2. For both Plantin and the Moretuses it was the journeymen's wages and the cost of paper that largely determined the cost of manufacture and therefore the selling prices of their books.