This outline of our knowledge of the process of releasing literature in late republican and
early imperial Rome addresses the nature of the recitations, the question of ‘publishing’
and distribution of books, from Atticus to Pliny the Younger. Although recognising that
the distribution of Roman literature to a large extent consisted of private copying and
exchange, I argue for the existence of a ‘book industry’ consisting of low-status craftsmen
and traders editing and reproducing books for a commercial market.