Publishing -- The rules of the game and how the game was played -- The landscape in Paris -- The fertile crescent -- Pirating -- How to pirate a book -- Portraits of pirates -- Underground Geneva -- A confederation of pirates -- The struggle to pirate Rousseau and Voltaire: Inside a Swiss publishing house -- Business as usual -- Our man in Paris -- Relations with authors -- Making and losing money.
Summary:
"All of the known universe is governed solely by books," Voltaire asserted, looking back at the end of his life on the battles he had fought against prejudice, ignorance, and injustice. The Enlightenment as a whole was driven by the power of books. Yet under the Ancien Régime, the book trade was encumbered by conditions that would seem impossible today. There was no liberty of the press, no copyright, no royalties, no returns, and no limited liability. There were virtually no authors who lived from their pens, very few banks, and very little money-none, in fact, that took the form of paper bills guaranteed as legal specie by the state. How could books become such a force under such conditions? This book is meant to explain their power by showing how the publishing industry operated. It explores the ways that publishers behaved--their modes of thought and their strategies for translating intellectual capital into commercial value. Of course, the power of books lay primarily in their contents: the crack of Voltaire's wit, the grip of Rousseau's passion, the audacity of Diderot's thought experiments have rightly won recognition at the heart of literary history. But that history has not taken adequate account of the middlemen who brought literature to readers. Publishers played a decisive role at the juncture where literary, political, and economic history flowed into each other"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.