The early printers were their own publishers and booksellers. Previous to the invention of typography the maker and seller of the book were not ordinarily the same person. It was only natural that in a short time the stationers, that is to say, the sellers of manuscript books and of writing materials, should sell printed books also. Both the printer and bookseller were interested in an attempt to cut out one profit. If the printer sold to the bookseller and the bookseller sold to the public, both must profit by the transaction. If the printer could sell directly to the public or the bookseller could print his own books, obviously the whole or the greater part of both of these profits might go to one man. In this competition, however, the bookseller had three advantages. One came from the fact that the carrying on of a printing plant was a business enterprise and the additional care of maintaining a selling organization for marketing books with the public was more than most printers were equal to. The second was that the bookseller could buy a whole edition or contract for its publication. In this way while he reduced the printer’s profits he also greatly reduced his risks. The third was that privilege and copyright attached themselves to manuscripts. If the bookseller bought the manuscript it could not be printed except by arrangement with him. When the bookseller became the owner of manuscripts, or became sufficiently confident of his power to market books to employ the printer to produce such books as he could use, he became a publisher in the modern sense of the word. He might either set up a printing establishment of his own or he might have his work done by contract by one or more outside printers. The business methods of the old printers were very simple. We have seen how Schoeffer did the first piece of commercial printing when he struck off for distribution a list of the books which he had on sale. We have seen how Jenson and Aldus and the other early printers sold their books at their printing offices, advertised them by correspondence, and sent them to the Frankfort Fair and other similar places. The Plantin workshop, which is still maintained as the Plantin Museum in Antwerp, still shows the little salesroom which was part of the original business. Caxton, with his sound business sense and trained business habits, had a way of assuring or forecasting beforehand the sales of his books, thus anticipating to a considerable extent the methods of the modern publishers.