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Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts. These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts-that they were custom-made luxury items-even when the production had become impersonal. Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted. Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire. Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation? Invisible threads are the strongest ties. ― Friedrich Nietzsche

The Price of Democracy and the Value of Literature. Books, Politics, and the Literary Market with Respect to the 2002 Reduction in VAT on Books in Sweden In 2002 the VAT (value added tax) on books in Sweden was reduced from 25 % to 6 %. The reduction was effected in response to a cultural policy, whose aim was to ”improve the conditions for literature and reading” and ”stimulate a diversified output of high quality literature and increase access to and interest in literature among all groups in society”. The reduction of VAT, which granted books an exception to the rule on uniform commodity taxation, was preceded by intense political debate as well as a lobbying campaign run by the Swedish Publishers’ Association. This article examines the relation between reading, literature and the book as an artefact and commodity, and claims that the book has political effects due to its nature as a medium of linguistic content. In terms of the concepts of reading and literature, both of which were understood as phenomena with inherent edifying and beneficial qualities, the book as a commodity was endowed – by the market, the media, and by politicians – with certain ideological values. In the discourse of this debate, the concept of ”consuming/purchasing books” was transformed into ”the reading of literature”. The reduction in VAT on the book as commodity was justified by an assumed connection between a certain material form of documents – books – and the valuable consequences that the use of such documents was believed to generate. Upon examination, reducing the VAT did not produce the expected results: that is the price of books did not diminish as it should have done. The objectives of government cultural politics – namely to produce new and increasing numbers amongst Sweden’s general readership – were not achieved. Jacques Rancière’s concepts ”the distribution of the perceptible”, and ”politics” are used to problematize the role both of the book, and of the market in cultural politics.