Books for Sale: The Advertising and Promotion of Print since the Fifteenth Century
New Castle, Delaware; London: Oak Knoll Press & The British Library, 2009. First edition. Hardcover. 191pp. Octavo [23.5 cm] Black cloth over boards. New / new. Item #50528
From the Publisher- "Advertising and promotion have always underpinned the business of bookselling but are often difficult for the historian to reconstruct. Once books were being produced in multiple copies, the book trade invested time, money, and imagination in the attempt to stimulate demand, manipulate customer choice, and expand the market. The mixed uses of marketing, both as product information and as an expression of trade identity and commercial rivalries, offer a glimpse at trade practices and the circumstances of individual careers.
This volume of eight original essays, with contributions by specialists in the promotion and marketing of print, as well as by leading historians of the book, explores themes that include the advertising and marketing techniques of booksellers and publishers across early modern Europe, the increasing use of newspaper and periodical advertisements in England and Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the dramatic impact of online marketing on the book trade. Other promotional tools discussed here range from the illustrated trade cards of eighteenth-century Paris to the rise of the book jacket and the cult of literary prizes in the twentieth century."
Price: $49.95