Book Trade

I

Introduction

Book Trade, the manufacture, publication, and distribution of books. The origins of the book trade can be traced to the graven clay and stone tablets and the polygonal cylinders of the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms, or the bound bamboo strips of the earliest Chinese scribes, but most authorities consider the papyrus scrolls of antiquity the true progenitors of the book. As early as 600 bc, scribes were known to have copied poems, speeches, and orations on these scrolls to sell them at high prices.

II

History

In Greece, the first regular sales of literary work probably were carried on by students of Plato, who sold or rented transcripts of his lectures. By 400 bc Athens was the literary capital of Greece and the centre for the production and selling of scrolls and papyri. The first Athenian booksellers prepared their own scrolls, but later entrepreneurs employed staffs of copyists and not only sold and rented manuscripts but also held readings in their shops for paying audiences. About 250 bc, Alexandria became one of the great book marts of the world. The first publishing and bookselling there occurred in connection with the great library of Alexandria founded by Ptolemy I. By training numbers of skilled scribes and exploiting the distributing facilities afforded by the commercial connections of their capital, Alexandrian publishers retained control of the greater part of world book production for more than two centuries.

In Rome the first publishers were wealthy men with literary taste who could afford the valuable slaves who served as scribes. By the end of the 1st century ad the book trade in Rome and other large cities of the empire was flourishing. With the removal of the capital to Constantinople in 328 ad, however, literary activities in Rome rapidly declined.

The consolidation of China into one empire by the Qin dynasty in 221 bc created the conditions for a large-scale book trade, but bookselling received an extra impetus from the invention of paper around the 1st century ad, which rapidly supplanted silk, bamboo, and wood as a basis for script. Bookshops had already sprung up in the national capital, Luoyang, by this time. By ad 800 its use had spread as far as Baghdad. The needs of China's imperial bureaucracy stimulated large-scale paper production and distribution; the book trade followed the growth of this industry. Early Chinese books were usually in scroll form. Buddhist charms from Japan dated to ad 770 show that by that time printing had already been developed, though it was long peripheral to mass production of manuscripts, which were sold in the great book marts of the Tang dynasty cities. The Song dynasty saw further extension of the publishing industry, with bound volumes replacing scrolls and vast editions of classics printed from woodblocks. China thereafter remained distinguished for its pervasive and technically advanced publishing industry.

A

Middle Ages

Itinerant booksellers were common figures in medieval Europe, but in the early Middle Ages bookmaking was largely a monopoly of the scriptoria, or writing rooms, of the monasteries. For some centuries books written in the monasteries were produced for the exclusive use of the monks or their lay pupils. Therefore, for centuries the knowledge of reading and writing remained mostly confined to the clerics. Later, under the influence of certain princes who owed their early education to monastery schools, the libraries of kings and nobles acquired manuscripts of the world's literature.

Later in the Middle Ages bookselling was stimulated by the rise of universities, particularly those established in Paris (1150) and Bologna (1200). The universities supervised the preparation of textbooks and literary works, and also prescribed the rates at which the books were to be sold or leased. The booksellers, known as stationarii, usually were university officials or graduates. The stationarii of the University of Paris supplied not only the university but nearly all the scholars of Europe. The stationarii at the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge began their work some years later than those in Paris or Bologna. Without the restrictions that hampered the freedom of the French and Italian scribes, their business flourished.

B

The Modern Book Trade

Modern publishing and bookselling began soon after 1440 and the advent of printing by movable type. The first printers often served as editors of the works they produced and then sold them directly to readers; they employed agents at universities to sell their books. Anton Koberger, the first printer to establish (1470) a business in Nuremberg, had 16 shops, as well as book agents in almost every city in the Christian world. The German printers Johann Fust, a partner of Johann Gutenberg, and Peter Schöffer offered their books at prices far below those charged for manuscripts.

The publisher with the greatest influence on the literature and civilization of this period was Aldus Manutius of Venice. It was to the high scholarly ideals and unselfish labours of Manutius and his immediate successors, no less than to the imagination, ingenuity, and persistence of Gutenberg and Fust, that Europe in the late 15th century was indebted for the great gift of Greek poetry and philosophy. In the organization of his printing and publishing business, Manutius overcame many obstacles, such as the necessity of training Italian typesetters to set Greek texts and the delivery of books from Venice to different points of the European continent.

Other outstanding publisher-booksellers of this period included William Caxton, who set up a printing business in Westminster, London in 1476 and was the first to introduce books printed in the English language. Caxton published many of his own translations of Latin, French, and Dutch works. The German printer Johann Froben founded a publishing establishment in Basel which became noted for the artistic taste and scrupulous accuracy of the books it produced.

A publishing enterprise of minor commercial importance that enormously influenced public opinion in Europe was instituted in the town of Wittenberg in Saxony, in 1517, at the instigation of the German religious reformers Martin Luther and Melanchthon. The pamphlets from this press, reprinted in other places by printers sympathetic to Luther, secured an extremely wide circulation.

For a time during the 16th and 17th centuries, the principal bookselling centres were a number of cities in the Low Countries, but by the 18th century publishing companies had been established in the major cities of Europe and America; some of them lasted into the 20th century.