“You who desire to have my books with you wherever you are, and to make them the companions of your long journeys, buy those which have been put up in compact form” (literally, “which the parchment compresses into small pages”).
Martial was apparently a chronic grumbler, and the record of his various complaints about his publishers and his public has been of not a little service in throwing light upon certain details of the publishing methods of his time. He was evidently one of the writers who kept a close watch on the receipts from the sales of his books. He maintained that a poet was perfectly justified in refusing to give presentation copies, because these interfered with the receipts from his booksellers.
He writes, for instance, to his friend Lupercus:
Occurris quotiens, Luperce nobis
Vis mittam puerum, subinde dicis,
Cui tradas epigrammaton libellum
Lectum quem tibi protinus remittam?
Non est quod puerum, Luperce, vexes.
Longum est, si velit ad Pyrum venire,
Et scalis habito tribus, sed altis.