Published October 28, 2026 | Episode 481
Since the invention of the printing press, printers have published books. And ever since books have been published, they have been sold. Yet today’s guest observes that, remarkably enough, there is a “paucity of literature on the history of the buying and selling of books.” While there have been plenty of studies of publishing and reading, “the commercial transactions that allowed books to pass from the producer to the reader are seldom explored.”
In his new book, The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century, my guest Andrew Pettegree attempts to remedy that deficiency. In his large net he captures such specimens as self-publishing, book pedlars, publishers’ representatives, printing on speculation, paperbacks, bookstore chains, and book clubs—nearly all of which turn out to be much older than one might expect. At the heart of his story is the intertwining of publishing and bookselling, which remained merged into the middle of the twentieth century and has, in many ways, become entangled once again in the era of digital books.
In this conversation, Pettegree explains how books have reached their readers through shops and market stalls, itinerant sellers and subscription agents, auctions and circulating libraries, department stores and the postal service. The book itself has proved remarkably durable; the means of selling it have always been adaptable, competitive, and inventive.
About the Guest
Andrew Pettegree is Bishop Wardlaw Professor at the University of St Andrews. Trained as a historian of the European Reformation, he is now one of the leading historians of communication, printing, publishing, and the book trade. As part of this study, he is the founder and director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue, a free resource that now describes more than 1.6 million editions published between 1450 and 1700, and has located almost seven million surviving copies in libraries, archives, and museums around the world.
For Further Investigation
Andrew Pettegree, The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century (Basic Books, 2026).
—, The Book in the Renaissance (Yale University Press, 2010).
—, The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading (Basic Books, 2023).
Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale University Press, 2019).
The Universal Short Title Catalogue, which brings together evidence for books published throughout Europe and its overseas colonies between 1450 and 1700.
The University of Kansas Libraries exhibition, “The Little Blue Books”, on the inexpensive pocket-sized books published by Emanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius in Girard, Kansas.
Related Episodes
Book Makers: Adam Smyth on the lives and technologies behind the printed page.
The Intellectual Life in Difficult Circumstances: Jonathan Rose on reading and self-education among the British working classes.
Librarian’s War: Molly Guptill Manning on Ray Trautman, the Armed Services Editions, and the creation of an army of readers.
Tags
Andrew Pettegree; Bookselling; Bookshops; History of the Book; Printing; Publishing; Reading; Reformation; Circulating Libraries; Paperbacks; Digital Books; Historically Thinking
