Chapter 7 - Publishing in the 1860s

Summary

This chapter, derived mainly from business-to-business serials such as The Bookseller[GK7], represents publishing in the 1860s as a collaborative enterprise comprising several interlocking systems. Basing its viewpoint in business-to-business texts shows that, unlike what is often suggested, it was not revolutionary. Instead, its use of technology and its distribution systems underwent a process of mainstreaming that intensified and refined extant methods of advertising, marketing, transport, wholesale, retail, and lending. Regulation was different, not because the various changes in the law offered anything new, but because details were modified in an attempt to improve them. Unlike many studies of publishing, this one engages with the regulation of labor relations, international distribution, and changing forms of business ownership as well as of the contents and ownership of texts through the laws of copyright, obscenity, and libel.