1460-1585 - Rise and general dissemination

  1. Introduction
  2. The book as physical object:
    1. introduction
    2. letters (including letter design, typecasting and type foundries)
    3. paper (including production, watermarks, paper trade)
    4. formats/design of the text
    5. illustrations en decoration
    6. bookbinding (including bookbinderies)
  3. Production:
    1. introduction
    2. organisation of a printing/publishing business
    3. relationship between publisher and author
    4. copy, composition, printing (printing presses, printing ink) and correction
    5. co-operation
    6. guilds
    7. working conditions
    8. copyright and piracy
    9. censorship
    10. financing, print-runs and prices
    11. language/genre
  4. Distribution:
    1. introduction
    2. the bookshop, its organisation and function
    3. kinds of booksellers
    4. range (genre/language) and forms of books traded
    5. methods of distribution/advertising
    6. forms of trading/payment
    7. foreign trade
  5. Consumption:
    1. introduction
    2. education and literacy
    3. types of reading public
    4. reading habits / traces of users
    5. institutional libraries
    6. private libraries (bibliophily)
    7. the survival chance of books