American Subscription Publishers and German-American Readers

Date: 14 June 2016
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Location: Class of 1978 Pavilion, 6th Floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania
Lecturer: Lynne Farrington - Senior Curator, Special Collections, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Nineteenth-century America saw the rise of a new kind of subscription publishing and a new approach to marketing. Once a relatively genteel means of seeking financial support for an expensive publication project with uncertain sales prospects, subscription bookselling expanded during the nineteenth century into a door-to-door solicitation of commitments to purchase particular titles not just prior to publication, as had been the case with earlier subscription ventures, but at any point in the publication process. This uniquely American publishing phenomenon grew out of a confluence of economic circumstances and opportunities.

Given the long presence of German-speaking people in the United States, augmented by hundreds of thousands who arrived in the late 1800s, it is not surprising that some American subscription publishing companies jumped at the chance to sell German language publications to this audience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, rather than creating separate canvassing books—incomplete examples used for soliciting subscriptions—for English and German readers, they simply added German materials such as specimen pages and broadside conditions, providing information on the publication, variant bindings, and prices for the particular title being sold. Equally important, the publishers provided information to agents about how to sell their books to non-English speakers when they came upon them in their travels.

This lecture will provide an overview of the subscription publishing industry, consider the German-American market, and compare the titles published in German to the broader range of titles sold through the subscription network.

Please note that due to space constraints, this lecture is open only to RBS participants.