The formula for calculating of circulation of early Russian books: use conditions

The period of the initial Russian book-printing documented very poorly, so, despite the huge number of scientific publications, knowledge about it is very limited and mostly hypothetical. Attempts to find innovative approaches to gaining knowledge, unfortunately, does not always lead to the desired results. Among these attempts, of course, was proposed by A.A Amosov in the early 1980's calculation of circulation of Russian editions XVI - early XVII century. However, knowledge about the domestic typography, accumulated in the last decades, suggests ineffectiveness of Amosov's formula. This conclusion was reached as a result of detailed analysis of the arguments of the author. "Side effect" of this analysis is the observation of interesting details of publishing activities late XVI - early XVII century. This period of the history of domestic printing refers to the least known, so any attempt to establish new details is of great importance. Amosov proposed scheme for calculating circulation of publication, consisting of several formulas. First is the basic formula: T = N x t/2Vp, where T - book circulation, N - the average daily productivity of the mill in printer's sheets, t - time of the real work on printing of the book in days, Vp - volume of the publication in printer's sheets. A number of auxiliary formulas can calculate the values in the basic formula. The formula for calculating of the circulation works in the conditions stated by the author as an axiom: the stability of printing technology and work organization during the reporting period. Calculated circulations of books, released in the Moscow State before 1610, were given by Amosov in the summary table. This information raised a number of questions among. Main question among them: how the circulations in 1300-1600 plus copies were printed? It arose from the fact that the number of prints with the set in the Middle Ages was not significantly greater than the value of 1200. We analyzed the start and end dates of work on each book, taking account of the breaks between the publications issued by one master. So we came to the conclusion that one issue was often printed on two mills; work on a publication could be suspended for the public release of the other. The unstable social and political situation in the country certainly influenced the rhythm of the printing press. Thus, the formula proposed by Amosov indeed allows to calculate the circulation. However, it works only if the coexistence of certain constants take place, but this condition was not possible in real life.

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