Denmark, Prussia, England, France, and Belgium all had laws respecting the rights of foreign authors. By 1850, only the US, Russia and the Ottoman Empire refused to recognize international copyright. And a ready supply was available from England. American publishers paid agents in England to acquire popular works, which were then rushed to the US and set in type. Competition was intense, and the first to publish had an advantage of only days before they themselves were subject to copying.
Intense competition leads to low prices.
It was through this provision, for example, that the works of Henry Miller including the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn were kept out of the United States because only a French printer could be found to publish them. This restriction on granting copyright to works by American authors printed abroad was not removed until 1984. Fourth , another hotly debated issue during the drafting stage of both the Copyright Clause of the Constitution and Copyright Act of 1790 was the duration of copyright. Initially duration was to be based on the average life span of authors. Thus under the Copyright Act of 1790, the duration of copyright was set at 14 years with the possibility of renewal for another 14 years if the author was still alive.