Hi
I just read through all of Master Halnoth's post and some of the rest. First off: big kudo's for all Halnoth's work and sharing.
There's some things going back and forth and I'd like to confirm what the final word is (yay or nay)
1. The frequency at which a scholar writes book is determined by his Academic skill (e.g Mathematician).
2. Nonetheless, any scholar will eventually write a book.
3. Increasing an Academic skill is nearly impossible as only about 30 Exp can be gained by any of the relevant activities, and all of these activities take very long.
4. The quality of a written work's content is not affected by the Academic skill
5. The quality of a written work's content is affected by the Writer skill (which also explains why the skill increases when books are writing).
6. The trade value of the written work is affected by the quality of the materials used.
Other important notes in summary form:
a) Reading books does not give xp toward anything other than reading and student
b) Master/Apprentice relationships only form if Master has skill 10+ and Apprentice lower
To maximize profit from producing books as a trade good:
Skill priorities = 1. high academic skill, 2. writer skill
More scholars = more books/scrolls
Higher value writing materials = more profit
Master/Apprentance relationships can be helpful as this is the only way to effectively increase a dwarf's academic knowledge level, which will, in turn increase his book production frequency. For this, teacher/student would be very useful. See note at bottom.
Happiness
Helps dwarven happiness levels by providing reading and meeting "needs". You probably don't need many books to achieve this, and you can maybe even buy many of them.
Potentially helps specifically scholars to be happy as they could derive happy thoughts from scholarly activities, such as making a breakthrough. There are, however, probably more effective conventional professions, such as the military or crafting to achieve this.
Since migrant great academics all usually have skill level 3 in one weapon and level 1 in other combat (e.g. dodging), it would be good to make them a milita captain for awhile (with less skilled dwarves) so they can improve their teaching. Once this is at a satisfactory level, he can be made a scholar. At this point, a soldier who has some good student levels BUT not high skill in another area could also be made a scholar: this should set the stage for an effective Master/Apprentice and the transfer of the academic skill.