Correspondence between Janssen and Crownfield throws some interesting side-lights on business details—the fixing of the price and the choice of selling agents[91]:
Now that ye hurry of treating her Majty is over[92] (writes Janssen) I hope ye University will come speedily to a resolution at what rate to sell Suidas, I would not have them to think of too high a price and I believe 3£ will be rather too much hoever I leave it to them but I hope they will not exceed 3£ which is 20s a volume.
KUSTER'S RECEIPT FOR A PORTION OF HIS FEE
Dr Bentley had told me you would write to some booksellers in Holld. Since we refused Mr Mortier's offers it might perhaps be of service but I think we could not pitch on a fitter person for disposing of a good quantity of Suidas beyond sea.
Bentley's financial negotiations with the Dutch booksellers were apparently not successful, since copies of the Lexicon were disposed of to foreign booksellers by the method of exchange:
Feby 1th 1705/6. Agreed then also yt foreign booksellers be treated with for an exchange of an hundred[93] Suidas's, for a number of bookes wch shall be esteem'd of equal value, & yt Catalogues of proper bookes wth their respective prises, be procur'd from them to be approv'd of by ye University.
The succession of troubles encountered by the university both in the production and distribution of this book illustrates the difficulties of the Curators in attempting to grapple with the details of stock-keeping and accountancy. By 1732 "part of ye impression was in ye University warehouse and ye rest was got into Mr Innys's[94] hands in London, but in such manner, yt neither had a perfect book."
After some two or three years of negotiation for the mutual purchase of sheets at ½d a piece, the university, having bought the whole of Innys's stock for £400, acquired 410 complete sets of the work and appointed a Syndicate to dispose of them. The Syndics, however, found remaindering difficult: