Thanks for the correction. I've never been so hard up in a game that I thought 4 XP was good enough for a magi's season. It makes com+0 people in a low book count world even more likely to write a tractatus.
Bad is relative. Q6 is bad in comparison with every saga I have seen, which I think is a flaw in the saga.
I think the market should be so that Q6 is at least ok, but in practice, as far as I have ever seen, it is not. I would rather ask if we would consider it a problem with a bustling market of readily available Q6 books. Why do you think? What does OP think?
It is certainly the case that Q6 is less valuable than Q11, and hence there would be less incentive to write it, and one would write fewer. More magi would value field practice over books.
But at the end of the day, the entire book system is flawed. People do not generally learn by studying one book for three months. Readerly students would consult many books and cross-reference. In this respect, 3ed library rules were better, and a system with library stats growing at a diminishing rate with each added book would be a lot better than the 4ed system we now have.
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I'm not sure I fully agree, but I certainly do not disagree. That particular part from Covenants was unfortunate.
And as for anyone arguing that 'only competent writers would write books bout their subject' - they need to read more uni-level hard science textbooks :-/
\note{
I was writing a long winded mess about why modern ideas of market economics are a bad assumption in context, but I lost track half way and deleted it.
}
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That is easy enough. All modern ideas of market economics build on large numbers and continuous functions. They cover neither small scale economics, of a thousand magi at least half of whom are insular, and all scattered across Christendom, nor the singularities when somebody launches a new concept.
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I was going for a bit more detail, but yeah, that probably sums up the gist of it.
This is a subtle issue to which my troupe has given a lot of thought in the past, in part because of a merchant-minded PC Redcap and the Exceptional Book Boon. The short answer is: what happens depends a lot on a) the type of book one is looking at and b) a number of "environmental" assumptions one might make about the Order at large - but by and large the demand for book copies is far lower than one might expect at first glance.
I'll note in passing that books that can be written by mundanes, including books on arcane subjects such as Finesse, would have their own dynamics (they'd be easier to create on the cheap, but then, a mundane instructor is better than most books anyways). I won't even touch books on Parma, books with limited public such as books on Spell Mastery or esoteric abilities, or Lab Texts. Instead, I'll just focus on Summae and Tractatus on a generic Art. These need to be addressed separately, starting with Tractatus.
First of all, remember that the Order in 1220 has a roughly stable population about 1200 members, each active on average about 120 years after Gauntlet. In other words, it "renews" itself at a rate of about 10 magi/year who must relearn the lessons of the previous generation. Changing these numbers or later ones a little won't change the end result by much.
Now, suppose you have written the best Tractatus ever written on Corpus. I'd say only a magus out of 2 advances in any particular Art beyond the point were good Summae (at least as good Quality as your Tractatus) are sufficient, as one cannot specialize in more than a few Arts. Of those specialists, maybe 80% would want to study your Tractatus (the rest prefer to study from vis or Djinni; or they may dislike you, your House, or books not written in Greek; etc.). So, on average 4 magi every year, i.e. 1/season. Meaning that if logistics were perfect, a single perfect copy of your exceptional Tractatus, bound in resonant materials (see Covenants) and briskly traded would suffice for the whole Order.
Now, that won't happen. Logistics are not perfect, and there will be a boom of interest in the first decade after your book appears. But it does show that even a very "globalized" Order only requires a handful of copies of any given Tractatus that pass from hand to hand via sale, loans, hospitality etc.. Note that a very fragmented, insular Order works effectively as a collection of independent smaller communities, each of which then requires even fewer copies of any given Tractatus. And while any mundane can copy a Tractatus, it does require significant effort to make it resonant (particularly beyond +1) further pushing towards a smaller number of higher-Quality copies circulating more frequently. Finally, the above is about truly exceptional Tractatus; merely "good" ones will see lower demand and thus fewer copies (the same would be true of Commentarii, that have a restricted audience because it needs to have read the base Summa first).
Now, if you are not only an excellent writer, but a senior specialist in Corpus and, many decades after your Gauntlet, you write the next Branch of the Arts, the best Summa the Order knows on Corpus, the situation will be different. More magi will want to read it (and its reputation will spread further); reading it will require several reasons; and many covenants will want to have it as a status symbol. You will make a small fortune selling access it, at least a queen of vis over several decades, but that probably pales in comparison with all the prestige and networking opportunities it will bring (note in this sense that Exceptional Book in Covenants is an External Relations Boon rather than a Resources one). And I would not find it unbalancing, either for game play (a senior magus leveraging his specialty, be it dragon-hunting or enchantment, is supposed to have a similar impact), or for setting balance.
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Thanks for the detailed answer! It sounds like (in your sagas) magi view owning a book not just as a way to get some XP, but also as an investment that gives a permanent source of revenue as people from other covenants pay to read it - whether that payment comes in the form of vis, political favours or access to other covenants' books. While it would be profitable up front, selling copies of the book to all the nearby covenants would be killing the golden goose - no one will pay to read your book if their own covenant has a copy.
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Thanks for the analysis. There are two points you ignore though.
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A magus aiming for the sky in one art will need 610xp IICC to advance from 20 to 40. That's 44 Q14 tractatus (with Book Learner and affinity, it still more than 20), Of the 100 magi coming through in a decade, it is not so improbable that at least one wants to specialise in the given art, and will go to great lengths to seek out and trade the tractatus they need. You are right that this does not create a big volume, but it is likely to make a big willingness to pay.
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The L20Q11 summa is not necessarily available at your covenant. They are a major investment and treasured by the libraries that have them. If your covenant cannot afford one, you may want to buy cheaper tractatus to advance at lower levels.
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Quality 14. Core rules, that needs Com +5 and good teacher I believe. I've been saying there should be a lot of books, but that extreme. 56 average Q11 tractatus seems more reasonable.
Your point stands. There will be enough demand by a few people for a large volume of tractatus.
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Absolutely, I would not expect to find 56 Q11 tractatus either. That is a lot of books.
That's what the rules for a large library sidebar in Transforming Mythic Europe (p105) do. It also makes low-Quality books progressively obsolete for the large library... although it also overrides the Tractatus rules so I'd expect it would be difficult to predict how using those rules would affect development over a long term.
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Thank you. I am definitely going to look that one up before I start another saga 
First of all I'm never going to advocate for not letting the players do such a thing. I will advocate for not making it easy. At the same time it is necessary to recognize less obvious limitations. As I mentioned, most villages are needing their labor force, so you won't be able to recruit willy nilly from the nearby village.
So you go toa city. A city (especially one with an educational system) will have a recruitable population, but cities are also the centers of opportunities. An academic is looking forward to a career as a professor, or perhaps a doctor, and while they might be willing to supplement their income with some scribal work there are not many who would sacrifice a season learning magic theory, an ability with no use for a mundane outside of being service to one particular employer. Someone would need to have been a part of the covenant community in order to see the value in this.
Of course you can pay them to take a class, but you can't (short of mind magic) make them pay attention. There are of course ways around this- such as forming a secret society/mundane initiation mystery for them to join. It will, however not be simple and easy. Of course there are scribes without academic ambition as well- but they tend to have professional ambitions, working their way up through the booksellers guild, which involves commitment to an apprenticeship with a recognized guild scribe, and then becoming a journeyman, and so on. certainly there will be individuals who fall through the cracks who can be recruited, but again it is not simple, nor easy.
What field practice is there? Studying from vis won't generate that much more XP and has a significant risk. Adventure XP is not something that you can gain in any chosen season.
One of my bigger issues with ArM is that there is no real alternative to reading and lab work.
In principal you can choose to adventure if you are proactive in your adventuring. "Hey I need to research cave drawings" or "Lets go find some information about the Gruagratch!"
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You are right that if the troupe does not want to play the story, you do not get it. Logically, however, as @silveroak says, you can decide whenever you want to go on a quest. The fact that you only learn as much, and only can learn arts, if the troupe decides to play it, is a peculiar artifact of the system.
... and to that, I can only say that I meant magi in general, not PCs in particular ...
Significatos, from Covenants p.101, have much to recommend them.
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I think you are forgetting the Tremere. They have excellent resources, are extremely interested in the book economy, and can simply order a talented new magus or two to focus exclusively on one technique or form for their entire life, or offer a member of another House vast resources and no distractions if they'll move to Transylvania to work on the project. (Especially if they have the appropriate affinity, good teacher, and book learner.) They'll provide everything you want--longevity potions, rituals to raise your communication, every quality tractatus available--and in return you regularly write an excellent tractatus, and toward the end of your life you produce the best summa on the topic ever seen. For a more scholarly magus, this would be a dream come true. (With two, they can swap tractati and also get the extra point of xp for meaningful correspondence.)
They can even hire mundanes to do the same thing for available subjects - teaching, (realm) lore, etc. And scribes. So many scribes. With an entire continent's worth of failed or scandal-ridden scholars and clerics to choose from, it won't be that hard to find a few misfits and rogues enthusiastic to start over in a new place with excellent wages and no local reputation hanging over their heads.
They might not share or even admit to the books without a fabulous favor in return, but they will have the best library known, in terms of quality over quantity. It's valuable and fairly achievable, albeit requiring a long time to finish. And they get the seasons back from their members who were planning to spend a few seasons on a merely average summa or tractatus, telling them there is no point, go back to your existing tasks. Why wouldn't they devote the relatively minor expenditure of resources to accomplish this? Game balance is one thing, but this is an obvious move from the extremely hierarchical and militaristic House.
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The Tremere are also likely to keep the books within their House, possibly trading in kind to improve their own but very unlikely to sell for vis. These Tremere resources are supposed to be a boon for Tremere PCs, more valuable than their House virtue ...
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If you read against the dark they do have such a program, though it is more modest tha you suggest in part because they are also using it to build an intelligence network to watch for potential dangers, which they regard as their house's primary mission. So on ethe one hand they do it, but they also have other competing priorities.