Creative Scribe
It is no longer enough for those of high status to brag about the number of books in their library, or the books' authors. Now they also get to brag about the scribes who copied those books.So you want to write books for a living? Two options really: you either write your own book and hope someone really likes it, or you work as a scribe copying other people's books for sale. Most people do a bit of both, since you always have a reliable job even if your own books do not sell that well. But what if there was a way to combine the creativity of a writer with the discipline of a scribe? Turns out, all you need to do is let scribes have a little bit of fun by making minor edits and personal commentaries to the books they are copying. As long as they are not detrimental to the meaning, of course. In fact, this very page contains my personal edits - see if you can spot them!
Career
Qualifications
The original book's author (or their heirs) can obviously decide how much changes a scribe is allowed to make, if any. Usually it is done on an individual basis: novice scribes are overwhelmingly employed to merely copy the book word-to-word, while those with experience are generally asked to act as creative scribes. It is also not uncommon for an author to judge the scribe's style based on their other copied books, either requesting or turning down specific scribes.
Of course, there are also authors who take a all-or-nothing stance on the matter. A lot of the more traditional publishers only sell word-to-word copies, as does the majority of scholars. On the other hand, professor Marco Bolduwick - the pioneer of this whole idea - requires that all his books are handled by creative scribes. He is very lenient with how much you can change too!
Perception
Social Status
In an interesting twist of fate, some creative scribes nowadays are actually valued higher than the authors of the very books they transcribe! In fact, it is not rare for nobles to collect books copied by a specific creative scribe for their individual style, without quite as much regard to the topic or original author of the books in question.
5Many of my creative scribe colleagues chose to use that fame in a fairly similar fashion. They would transcribe a bunch of popular books, make a name for themselves and then write a book of their own. Often times, the books to copy are chosen in such a way that they would be similar in topic and style to the creative scribe's own idea. Then again, some people are perfectly content making snark remarks in other people's books and not bother with selling their own.
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