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  • 6 - Distribution

  • Edited by David McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 March 2009, pp 238-280

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the ways in which books, newspapers and periodicals reached the reader during the period 1830-1914. It discusses major wholesalers such as W. H. Smith & Son and John Menzies who exploited market potential both as a mode of distribution and as a venue for the sale of texts in the form of railway bookstalls. Speed of distribution was important if the publisher was to make the most of the advertising campaign that usually accompanied the publication of a book or magazine. In the early nineteenth century, Britain enjoyed a good postal service and the mail coaches transported huge numbers of newspapers, especially after 1825 when an Act of Parliament made it legal for all stamped newspapers to pass through the post without further payment. From the late 1890s, W. H. Smith began to organise the wholesale trade on a regional basis. The 'western wholesale organisation' served as a model.