History of bookselling
The selling of
, it became the fashion to have a library, and Roman booksellers carried on a flourishing trade.Greek and Roman booksellers
In the book of
Islamic bookshops
Abbasid Caliphate in the east and Caliphate of Córdoba in the west, encouraged the development of bookshops, copyists, and book dealers across the entire Muslim world, in Islāmic cities such as Damascus, Baghdad, and Córdoba. According to Encyclopædia Britannica:
Scholars and students spent many hours in these bookshop schools reading, examining, and studying available books or purchasing favourite selections for their private libraries. Book dealers traveled to famous bookstores in search of rare manuscripts for purchase and resale to collectors and scholars and thus contributed to the spread of learning. Many such manuscripts found their way to private libraries of famous Muslim scholars such as Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, and al-Fārābī, who in turn made their homes centres of scholarly pursuits for their favourite students.[2]
There is a popular turn of phrase from the 1960s, "Books are written in Cairo, published in Beirut, and read in Baghdad".[3][4] One of the most famous and prestigious Arab publishers is Dar al-Asab.[5]
French booksellers
The first wave of French booksellers came soon after
The Book-Hunter in Paris by Octave Uzanne explores second hand and used booksellers and stalls in Paris during the late 19th century. [7]
The Société typographique de Neuchâtel sales representative, Jean-François Favarger, made several tours of France and Switzerland, selling books and negotiating deals with booksellers in 1775-1776. [8]
In 1810 Napoleon created a system by which, a would-be bookseller had to apply for a license (brevet), and supply four references testifying to his morality, and four confirmations of his professional ability to perform the job. All references had to be certified by the local mayor. If the application was accepted, the bookseller would have to swear an oath of loyalty to the régime. The application process was conducted to ensure that the new bookstore was not a place that distributed rebellious publications. The brevet process continued until 1870.[9]
Christianity
The spread of
books of great value are sold and carried away from Oxford, the owners of them are cheated, and the sworn stationers are deprived of their lawful business. It was, therefore, enacted that no bookseller except two sworn stationers or their deputies, should sell any book being either his own property or that of another, exceeding half a mark in value, under a pain of imprisonment, or, if the offence was repeated, of forfeiting his trade within the university.[10]
Modern bookselling
The modern system of bookselling dates from soon after the introduction of
The religious dissensions of the
The first patent for the office of king's printer was granted to
In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries the Low Countries for a time became the chief centre of the bookselling world, and many of the finest folios and quartos in our libraries bear the names of Jansen, Blauw or
The first British copyright statute, the
Modern book-selling has changed dramatically with the advent of the computer. With major websites such as
Selling and publishing
For later times it is necessary to make a gradual distinction between booksellers, whose trade consists in selling books, either by retail or wholesale, and
James Lackington is credited as the person responsible for changing this profession. His bookshop, known as "The Temple of the Muses," was in Finsbury Square in north London. http://www.templeofthemuses.org/
Specialty developments
During the 19th century it remains the fact that the distinction between publisher and bookseller—literary promoter and shopkeeper—became fundamental. The booksellers, as such, were engaged either in wholesale bookselling, or in the retail, the old or
Coming between the publisher and the retail bookseller is the important distributing agency of the wholesale bookseller. It is to him that the retailer and libraries look for supplies, as it is impossible to stock all of the books published. Paternoster Row, London, was for over a hundred years the centre of this industry, where retail booksellers, busily engaged in obtaining the books ordered by the book-buying public. It is where the publisher calls first on showing or "subscribing" a new book, a critical process, for by the number thus ordered the fate of a book is sometimes determined.[1] In the United States, Baker & Taylor is a major distributor.
What may be termed the third partner in publishing is the retail bookseller; and to protect their interests there was established in 1890 a London booksellers' society, which had for its object the restriction of discounts to 25%, and also to arrange prices generally and control all details connected with the trade. The society a few years afterwards widened its field of operations so as to include the whole of the United Kingdom, and it became "The Associated Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland."[1]
Bookselling in the United States
The history of bookselling in the United States is of special interest. The
African-American Booksellers
Bookselling is a profession historically dominated by white Americans, but African Americans developed their own tradition of book selling, particularly in conjunction with radical political movements such as abolitionism, black nationalism, Black Power, and Marxism. The first documented
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bookselling". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 233–235. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ "education", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008, archived from the original on 2008-04-24, retrieved 2008-09-30
- ^ "Plus de kutub, please". The Economist. Archived from the original on 16 April 2018. Retrieved 15 April 2018.
- ISBN 9781606060834.
- ISBN 9781606060834.
- ^ Herluison, Henri (15 March 1868). "Recherches sur les imprimeurs & libraires d'Orléans: recueil de documents pour servir à l'histoire de la typographie et de la librairie orlèanaise, depuis de XIVe siècle jusqu'a nos jours". H. Herluison. Archived from the original on 15 January 2022. Retrieved 15 March 2018 – via Google Books.
- ^ Uzanne Octave. 1893. The Book-Hunter in Paris: Studies among the Bookstalls and the Quays. London: E. Stock.
- ^ Darnton, Robert (2017) “The Travels of a Publisher’s Sales Rep, 1775–76.” Book History 20, no. 1: 111–25.
- ISBN 978-1-60606-083-4.
- ^ Chisholm 1911.
- ISBN 9781606060834.
- ISBN 9781606060834.
- ISBN 9781606060834.
- ^ Davis, Joshua Clark (28 January 2017). "Black-Owned Bookstores: Anchors of the Black Power Movement – AAIHS". www.aaihs.org. Archived from the original on 2019-04-27. Retrieved 2017-02-21.