In 1820, Carl Hartman published a “Handbook of the Flora of Scandinavia”, which went through twelve successful editions and soon acquired the status of standard reference flora for Swedish botanists on all levels. Apart from botanical renown, the handbook provided a welcome addition to the fairly meagre income of a district medical officer. Hartman tried the same stratagem in the field of medicine, publishing “The family doctor” in 1828, a book of popular medicine. This, although commercially successful, was widely criticised by his fellow physicians. Hartman’s career and his publications illustrate the difficulties as well as the opportunities created by a growing – albeit slowly – professional arena for science (Shapin 2008, Desmond 2001). These were contested issues in the emergence of modern universities and secondary schools in the decades after 1800, when the wider availability of printed textbooks and manuals challenged the role of lecturers. The writing of textbooks and handbooks was, nevertheless, a crucial tool for establishing a scientific career in the early 19th-century, making it possible to make a living and gain a following, while at the same time potentially undermining the teaching monopoly of schools and universities. In this paper I want to talk about how publishing for a wide audience served as a tool for furthering botanical careers in Sweden during the first half of the nineteenth century, when employment prospects in science were poor (cf Secord 2002). Through the “Handbook”, Hartman reached a wide audience of botanists, from schools to universities as well as outside the education system, and he gained recognition from his professional peers. In the field of medicine, however, medical handbooks – even when written by physicians – were seen as a threat to the authority of the profession. The contrast with medicine highlights the norms and practices (cf Daston 1995) of what may not have been a profession, but was an increasingly workable scientific career.