Glynn Marshes writes:

Before 1820 American readers and publishers preferred to import or pirate their books from England, because English texts were at once less expensive and more fashionable. For want of copyright protection for imported works, it was cheaper for American publishers to reprint English works than to pay native authors. Indeed, although Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (1791) sold phenomenally well, she reaped almost none of the profits, because it was originally published in London and then pirated in America. Moreover, English novels offered more romantic characters and exotic settings — lord and ladies in castles or grand estates — than seemed possible in common and commercial America. Professing themselves a people of equality and common sense, Americans doubted that their society could ever inspire a novelist. So doubting, they continued to read the imports. Consequently, the most promising American novelist of the previous generation, Charles Brockden Brown, had failed to support or sustain himself.

— Alan Taylor, in William Cooper’s Town, explaining why it would never have occurred to James Fenimore Cooper (William’s son) that he could make a living by writing novels.