Search

In Turkey, the Tevhid-i Tedrisat Law (March 3, 1924), which came into force with the establishment of the Republic and aimed at bringing education completely under the control of the state within the framework of a common curriculum, and the process of transition from the Arabic to the Latin script, the so-called 'Letter Revolution" in 1928, led to radical changes in book printing and literacy. This paper analyzes the basic characteristics and changes in the practice of selling books in Arabic script from peddlers to booksellers. The study is limited to Diyarbakır. For the study, in-depth interviews were conducted with three booksellers in Diyarbakır, with people who worked in bookselling at different times, and with madrasa teachers who visited the bookstores. As places of religious and, to some extent, literary education, madrasas were one of the most important institutions that contributed to the formation of an literate community. Bookstores were one of the places where this community socialized. They served as a place where madrasa teachers could exchange ideas about books and, in case of disagreement, take the relevant books from the shelves and discuss them. For this reason, changes in the book trade will also make important contributions to the analysis of changes in the literacy tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to establish some preliminary numbers for the survival rates of some different kinds of cheap print, especially ballads and chapbooks, from the second half of the eighteenth century. The basic method is to compare contemporary booksellers' lists with modern records of surviving copies, especially ESTC. An important question is whether survival rates can be correlated with price and/or type of content, and whether the publications of certain booksellers have survived better than others. Methodological problems of such a study include variation in sample size, and especially the unreliability of results based on very small samples, and the critical role of collectors in ensuring that publications of this kind survived at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the phenomenon of the gift enterprise bookstore in the mid-nineteenth-century United States. An early form of premium marketing, the gift-book enterprise promised to reward each book purchase with a surprise 'gift', ranging from pencils to dress patterns to cutlery to jewellery. A novel form of marketing books, the gift enterprise bookstore teetered on a thin line between sensation and sham. Although decried as form of illegal lottery gambling and beset by accusations of dishonesty, gift-book enterprises grew immensely popular. Drawing on extensive archival research on one of the most successful gift-book enterprises, the bookstores of G.G. and D.W. Evans--operating in urban centres from 1856-1861--this article examines gift enterprise bookselling in the context of mid-nineteenth-century American print cultures. As savvy entrepreneurs, the Evans' leveraged the national reach and perceived authority of the newspaper by engaging in debates over the morality and legality of the business in the columns of widely-circulating papers and capitalised on editorial and reprinting practices to endorse their business model and market their bookstores. In addition, in lengthy bookseller catalogues distributed across the nation, the Evans' created a bookstore in print and shaped inclusive imagined and real communities of readerbook buyers. Examining the print culture of Evans' gift-book enterprise offers new insights into nineteenth-century book marketing and the ways in which gift enterprise bookselling was intimately connected to and inseparable from contemporary print forms, networks, and practices. Taking the gift-book enterprise seriously expands the histories of American bookselling and decentres the dominant focus on large publishers. In addition, the gift-bookstore phenomenon highlights how bookselling is always entwined with larger cultural dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although protected by the law on fixed prices for books, independent bookshops in France have struggled to maintain their market share against bookselling giants such as Amazon and the chains. In trying to do so, they have developed a rhetoric based on the singularity of the experience in physical shops, stressing a sense of intimacy akin to that associated with the domestic sphere. Their being independent – no matter how slippery the notion – has also been a key argument. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of symbolic goods, this paper aims to show that this strategy has been effective in singling out something that 'only' independent retail can provide, something that proves particularly attractive to certain categories of customers. The article draws on semi-structured interviews carried out with owners of small and medium-sized independent bookshops, together with observation during events and debates, to provide some insight into a key element of physical bookshops' resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the eighteenth century transactions at The Boston Bookstore of bookseller Benjamin Guild in Massachusetts based on the manuscript daybook maintained by Guild. Topics explored include the sale of books on politics and religion to early American readers, observations on the pricing structure of the bookstore, and the non-book items sold by Guild which range from quills to ink powder.