Periodic Reporting for period 5 - EMoBookTrade (The Early Modern Book Trade: An Evidence-based Reconstruction of the Economic and Juridical Framework of the European Book Market)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-09-01 do 2022-08-31
The EMoBookTrade project studied the development of the early modern European print market using unexplored evidence. To fulfill this goal, the project has focused on a reconstruction of the economic history of publishing and bookselling. The project has addressed some crucial questions related to book prices and the States’ controlled dynamics of political economy in the publishing sector. The team has developed a thorough case study based on the path breaking politics of book privileges initiated by Venice and also produced scholarship for other Italian states. Moreover, to consolidate the knowledge on early modern management of the bookselling business, a set of case studies were narrowed down by focusing on two major cities in the European book trade, Venice and Antwerp. For the former the activity of publisher and bookseller B. Giunti was singled out and for the latter the firm of C. Plantin and J. Moretus was chosen. Lastly, to expand our knowledge on the technique of building and managing a transnational network for book distribution and sale, attention has been given to some groundbreaking evidence represented by an entire year of correspondence of a Venetian bookseller, G. B. Gabiano.
The project created a hitherto non-existent but utterly productive research field at the junction between book history and economic history. To do so, both an innovative methodology and ground-breaking research tools were developed to process sizeable commercial and legal documents pertaining to the European book trade in the 16th–17th centuries. This resulted in two online research databases containing (1) circa 33,000 book prices derived from 73 sources from major European firms (including Plantin, Giunti, Giolito, Manuzio, Morel, Estienne, Feyerabend), in 10 different currencies and (2) 5,300 Venetian book privileges issued between 1469 and 1603.
The developed methodology links commercial data with intricate bibliographic data to establish book prices, which are in turn recalculated into synchronically and diachronically comparable value, i.e. Lire Veneziane and grams of silver.
The analysis of these data and business documents has shed light on (1) contemporary pricing policies of publishers and booksellers, (2) their continuous seeking of protection through book privileges, (3) the settlement and organization of transnational distribution networks (e.g. Gabiano), (4) the morphology of publishing firms (e.g. Gabiano, Giunti), and (5) the nature of previously unknown benchmarking tools used to monitor wide ranging spaces of the book market in order to assess potential risks and opportunities (i.e. Giunti, Plantin).
The methodology, the research tools, and the surveys conducted by the team were disseminated in the context of 15 international conferences, as well as in an array of invited lectures, seminars and workshops held in Europe, the UK, the USA and Canada. The team produced 3 monographs, 8 peer-reviewed edited volumes and 35 peer-reviewed articles or book chapters, all in gold open access.
The project created a hitherto non-existent but utterly productive research field at the junction between book history and economic history. To do so, both an innovative methodology and ground-breaking research tools were developed to process sizeable commercial and legal documents pertaining to the European book trade in the 16th–17th centuries. This resulted in two online research databases containing (1) circa 33,000 book prices derived from 73 sources from major European firms (including Plantin, Giunti, Giolito, Manuzio, Morel, Estienne, Feyerabend), in 10 different currencies and (2) 5,300 Venetian book privileges issued between 1469 and 1603.
The developed methodology links commercial data with intricate bibliographic data to establish book prices, which are in turn recalculated into synchronically and diachronically comparable value, i.e. Lire Veneziane and grams of silver.
The analysis of these data and business documents has shed light on (1) contemporary pricing policies of publishers and booksellers, (2) their continuous seeking of protection through book privileges, (3) the settlement and organization of transnational distribution networks (e.g. Gabiano), (4) the morphology of publishing firms (e.g. Gabiano, Giunti), and (5) the nature of previously unknown benchmarking tools used to monitor wide ranging spaces of the book market in order to assess potential risks and opportunities (i.e. Giunti, Plantin).
The methodology, the research tools, and the surveys conducted by the team were disseminated in the context of 15 international conferences, as well as in an array of invited lectures, seminars and workshops held in Europe, the UK, the USA and Canada. The team produced 3 monographs, 8 peer-reviewed edited volumes and 35 peer-reviewed articles or book chapters, all in gold open access.
The team, helped by an IT specialist, designed and built the EMoBookTrade Database, a tool which includes controlled vocabulary from state-of-the-art digital sources. To answer different kinds of research questions, two different front-end interfaces were created: the Early Modern Book Privileges in Venice and Early Modern Book Prices databases. The former give access to a vast array of information concerning Venetian book privileges. The latter provides extensive information regarding prices of early modern imprints. At present, this relational database has no equal in the field of book history, especially in terms of number of entries and in their coherent mutual systematization. The architecture of both databases has been published and all data therein contained are freely accessible to the public to download in standardized formats.
The Early Modern Book Privileges in Venice database includes 5,300 granted privileges (expected to be about 2,000 at the beginning of the project) and it is the glaring indication of how much publishers and authors valued and needed this early form of copyright to protect their own production.
The Early Modern Book Prices database has been built on 73 sources from different European areas (Italy, Germany, France and the Low Countries) with the goal of supporting scholars’ interpretation and analysis in the field of book prices. Some typical queries may include: searching for the most common criteria in setting book prices; investigating average/median prices at a given span of time, or within a certain geographic area, or for specific kind of editions or literary genres; isolating price fluctuations over time. Team members have successfully tested these research questions by applying them to datasets of different sources and areas. Their studies have been published and others are forthcoming.
One of the biggest innovations of this database is the availability of an automated currency converter which has been built to allow prices comparison across Europe. Early modern currencies including Carolus Gulders, Livres Tournois, Neapolitan Ducats, Lire Ferraresi, Frankfurt Gulden, and others are converted in Lire Veneziane, the most commonly recurring currency within our sources, with the correspondent value in grams of silver used as a transnational common parameter.
Beyond quantitative analysis of series of data, a qualitative approach, as well as a micro-analytic focus concerning the human factor involved in book trade has been employed. This last feature is particularly visible in the correspondence of the Gabiano family. A bilingual edition (i.e. Italian and English) of 110 letters received by the Venetian bookseller G. B. Gabiano from 42 different correspondents will be soon published by Brill. This will comprise a detailed commentary and an accompanying critical apparatus, plus a substantial introduction. This set of sources shed light on the structuring of commercial networks and the configuration of business models proper of the Gabianos and it highlights unexpected personal interactions, ranging from business liaisons based on mutual trust or reciprocal convenience to bitter suspicion and violent litigations.
The Early Modern Book Privileges in Venice database includes 5,300 granted privileges (expected to be about 2,000 at the beginning of the project) and it is the glaring indication of how much publishers and authors valued and needed this early form of copyright to protect their own production.
The Early Modern Book Prices database has been built on 73 sources from different European areas (Italy, Germany, France and the Low Countries) with the goal of supporting scholars’ interpretation and analysis in the field of book prices. Some typical queries may include: searching for the most common criteria in setting book prices; investigating average/median prices at a given span of time, or within a certain geographic area, or for specific kind of editions or literary genres; isolating price fluctuations over time. Team members have successfully tested these research questions by applying them to datasets of different sources and areas. Their studies have been published and others are forthcoming.
One of the biggest innovations of this database is the availability of an automated currency converter which has been built to allow prices comparison across Europe. Early modern currencies including Carolus Gulders, Livres Tournois, Neapolitan Ducats, Lire Ferraresi, Frankfurt Gulden, and others are converted in Lire Veneziane, the most commonly recurring currency within our sources, with the correspondent value in grams of silver used as a transnational common parameter.
Beyond quantitative analysis of series of data, a qualitative approach, as well as a micro-analytic focus concerning the human factor involved in book trade has been employed. This last feature is particularly visible in the correspondence of the Gabiano family. A bilingual edition (i.e. Italian and English) of 110 letters received by the Venetian bookseller G. B. Gabiano from 42 different correspondents will be soon published by Brill. This will comprise a detailed commentary and an accompanying critical apparatus, plus a substantial introduction. This set of sources shed light on the structuring of commercial networks and the configuration of business models proper of the Gabianos and it highlights unexpected personal interactions, ranging from business liaisons based on mutual trust or reciprocal convenience to bitter suspicion and violent litigations.
The project has convincingly demonstrated that interdisciplinary collaboration among book historians, cultural historians, economic historians, statisticians and software developers can produce theories explaining the mechanisms and rationales at work in the early modern book trade of Europe. The combination of methods pertaining book history, bibliography, economic-history and statistical analysis has led to the recalculation of books in terms of printed sheets with values expressed in Lire Veneziane and grams of silver. This in turn made it possible to compare prices synchronically in different regions and diachronically, while factoring in macro-economic phenomena such as inflation and currency debasement.
Thanks to a systematic use of price data, the team and future users will be able to measure book price trends over time, analyze the pricing policy of different publishers in different contexts, and understand the demand curve of texts, authors and genres. All the above-mentioned data will be of utmost interest not only for book historians but also for culture historians, economic historians, and scholars of consumption history.
Thanks to a systematic use of price data, the team and future users will be able to measure book price trends over time, analyze the pricing policy of different publishers in different contexts, and understand the demand curve of texts, authors and genres. All the above-mentioned data will be of utmost interest not only for book historians but also for culture historians, economic historians, and scholars of consumption history.