bookselling

The publisher’s techniques for book promotion have become increasingly sophisticated in all advanced countries. The typical traveler or book salesman is likely to hold a college degree, certainly in the United States; he receives a careful briefing from the home office, with…

The industry for buying and selling e-books first emerged as a mainstream business in the late 1990s, when companies like Peanut Press began selling book content for reading on personal digital assistants (PDAs), handheld devices that were the predecessors of smartphones and tablet computers. However, in the aftermath of the…

…development of bookshops, copyists, and book dealers in large, important Islamic cities such as Damascus, Baghdad, and Córdoba. Scholars and students spent many hours in these bookshop schools browsing, examining, and studying available books or purchasing favourite selections for their private libraries. Book dealers traveled to famous bookstores in search…

The discreet sales methods of the 19th century, whereby the sales representative merely showed his samples and the publisher took small spaces in newspapers for the bare announcement of title and author of his new books, were replaced by more forceful techniques. In…

…of supply, the publishing and bookselling trades. Some companies combine the two functions. Purchases by libraries have traditionally generated much of the revenue of local bookshops, but firms operating as specialist library suppliers are able to offer many auxiliary services, such as attaching plastic covers and inserting labels of ownership,…