The authors were doubtless in a position in many cases to dispose of their free copies for money. It is evident, however, from the literary correspondence of the time, that the practice was very general on the part of authors of sending complimentary copies to each other, a practice which, as developed, came to absorb a substantial portion of the edition. Authors were able to build up their libraries with books received in exchange, but collections of books, however essential or desirable, did not help directly towards income. This distribution of complimentary copies became naturally a still more considerable item when there was question, not simply of an exchange of scholarly compliments, but of the widest possible distribution of a teaching or a doctrine. Thus Luther is described as giving away whole editions of certain of his monographs, which he could do the more easily as the editions printed in Wittenberg were, for the most part, the property of the author.[84] The practice of securing money presents in consideration of dedications or of eulogies printed in prefatory epistles, seems to have played an important part in the calculations of certain classes of authors during the first half of the sixteenth century. Cuspinian writes to Pirckheimer, in 1501, asking counsel concerning the advisability of dedicating the first volume of a work he had in press with Koberger to the chief magistrate of Nuremberg. Pirckheimer tells his friend that some more advantageous patron could doubtless be found. “You must remember,” he writes, “that we are here a very commercial people ... and some among our magistrates hardly understand what literature is.”[85] Five years earlier, however, Martin Behaim (or Behem) had received from the Nuremberg magistrate of that day a gift of twenty-four florins for some honourable mention of the magistrate’s name on his big map of the world.[86] A year or two earlier, namely in 1488, the magistrates in Nuremberg had given to Siegmund Mensterlin thirty-seven florins for his _Chronicle_ of the city. This may, however, be considered in the light of a direct payment for a service to the city, rather than as an honorarium for a compliment. In 1502, Conrad Celtes received in like manner from the treasury in Nuremberg the sum of twenty florins, “for his labour in the description of our city and for the record of its origin.”