In 1820, James Mill seeks permission for a plan to print and circulate 1,000 copies of his Essay on Government, originally published as a Supplement to Napier’s Encyclopaedia Britannica:
I have yet to speak to you about an application which has been made to me as to the article on Government, from certain persons, who think it calculated to disseminate very useful notions, and wish to give a stimulus to the circulation of them. Their proposal is, to print (not for sale, but gratis distribution) a thousand copies. I have refused my consent till I should learn from you, whether this would be considered an impropriety with respect to the Supplement. To me it appears the reverse, as the distribution would in some degree operate as an advertisement.
Mill’s article was thus given a wider circulation that the Supplement to the Encyclopedia would have afforded by itself … By 1824 … there had appeared what was possibly a second edition … Mill, in a letter of August 1825, speaks of the second reprint ‘being all gone, and great demand remaining.’ (He also mentions … that his essays ‘are the text-books of the young men of the Union at Cambridge’.
Another historical precedent
In 1820, James Mill seeks permission for a plan to print and circulate 1,000 copies of his Essay on Government, originally published as a Supplement to Napier’s Encyclopaedia Britannica:
Ernest Barker suggests it was quite successful: