SOURCE: Barbier, Frédéric. “The Publishing Industry and Printed Output in Nineteenth-Century France.” In Books and Society in History, edited by Kenneth Carpenter, pp. 199-230. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1983.

In the following essay, Barbier explains the growth and evolution of the publishing industry in nineteenth-century France, focusing on changes in marketing and demographics.

In recent years, French as well as foreign scholars¹ have cast light on the profound changes in the economics of publishing that occurred in the nineteenth century. Nearly four centuries after the Gutenberg revolution, there took place what can be called the “second revolution of the book.” It was characterized, first of all, by an enormous jump in the bulk of printed output, in which the periodical press played an ever increasing role. Simultaneously, production and distribution were radically altered. Yet, despite this transformation, which is at the basis of the publishing industry...