In 1789, Karl Philipp Moritz and Joachim Heinrich Campe became engaged in a public controversy that raised fundamental questions about authorship, literature, and the literary market. This dispute between author and publisher serves as the starting point for this article, which first examines the fundamentally changing conditions of writing and publishing at the end of the eighteenth century. Against this background, the focus will be on the specific conditions in the field of children’s literature, in which Campe and Moritz are known to have played an important role. The notions of authorship, textual use, and writing practices established here can draw attention to the specific rules and logics that develop in the field of children’s literature and stimulate more fundamental questions about its theoretical modelling. In this context, possible connections to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the literary field are discussed, which has not yet found much resonance in children’s literature studies.