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[vjmdhzgr]

Pretty simple question. Can you sell books to a caravan? I've been unable to order any books to be brought to the trade depot, which is a bit disappointing because so far my fortress contains the only three original books in the world so I want to take advantage of this before any other books get written.

[PatrikLundell]

I don't think they can. Books are artifacts technically, and artifacts cannot be sold (but obviously stolen by visiting scholars...).
While piggybacking on artifacts' ability to be tracked in the world provides a convenience, it also results in a number of rather annoying side effects, such as not being possible to be sold, nor to be dumped (so if a dorf drops a book and you want it moved, you just have to wait until the very low priority "store in location" job fetches it).
I've also had two other annoying cases recently. In the first case a book was marked for dumping for unknown reasons, and since you can't mark them for dumping, you can't unmark them either. In the other case a visiting performer attacked a giant tick, and left behind a corpse and three books. One of these was never hauled away, and it turned out it was marked as "merchant" owned. I changed both of these flags with the DFHack tool gui/gm-editor.

I believe Toady ought to split the artifact tag into two (or better, make it a tri state value) so books would be tracked, but still be normal items otherwise, subject to normal sale, dump, and destruction criteria (I think written quires are subject to wear: unwritten once certainly are).

[vjmdhzgr]

Well the copies of the books aren't listed in the artifacts list, and don't seem to be tracked in world generation. Are those available for normal item features? I'm guessing it's still no, but they do seem to be treated a bit differently.

[Saiko Kila]

Well the copies of the books aren't listed in the artifacts list, and don't seem to be tracked in world generation. Are those available for normal item features? I'm guessing it's still no, but they do seem to be treated a bit differently.

You can sell copies. It's just they aren't available if a dwarf uses them at the moment, or the item is bugged. Which is almost always. But you can forbid them, dump, bring to depot, sell, and even give to the elves - if they aren't bugged. For example recently I ordered a book to trade, traded it, bought back (to see what happens), and now I can't order it to bring to depot again, even though it is in the depot. That's how the bug looks. I think it is related to job "store item in location". It is always created when the book is out of library. So you have to wait till it is in the library, and then none of dwarves or visitors wants to access it.

If you want to make money, there are better businesses than books. If you want to disperse the books, then wait for the thieving scholars, who usually steal them.

[PatrikLundell]

Hm, the books I've happened to look at were originals, and it's quite reasonable that copies would be treated differently.
The infuriating "Store in Location" jobs are constantly generated for all my books, causing dorfs to run to the bookcase, touch a book, run away 10 steps, run back, touch a new book,... When loading a save it seems every book is generating such a job (literally pages of them in jobs). These jobs are then regenerated at some rate, so every book has to be encouraged every so often. That causes a serious dent in my fortresses' need fulfillment activities.

[Saiko Kila]

The most maddening to me is desire of dwarves to read quires. Which greatly deters my bookbinder from actual bookbinding.

[Bumber]

The most maddening to me is desire of dwarves to read quires. Which greatly deters my bookbinder from actual bookbinding.

Books are currently broken anyway. Stick with the quires for now.