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The uses of quantification

  • Alexis Weedon
Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Abstract

Revised and updated chapter with new material for the second edition of A Companion to the History fo the Book. Because text production – in the past and now – frequently aimed at multiplying and spreading its product as much as possible, and because those texts commonly became subject to markets and market forces, historical records of books and the book trade sometimes take the form of lists of quantities. Particularly since the invention of printing, we sometimes have information about the fee paid to an author, cost of paper, cost of composition, print runs, cost and rate of binding, costs of advertizing and distribution, sales figures, library acquisitions and catalogues of private collections of readers. The information is usually patchy, the way it was recorded varied a great deal, and much more has been lost than survives but, even so, the data available is rich enough and important enough to be treated seriously. This is where the quantitative history of the book, or bibliometrics, comes in. It doesn’t answer all the questions, and often its answers need careful interpretation, but it does give us access to parts of book history that would otherwise be wholly inaccessible.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 31-50

Publication milestones

  • Published - 16/08/2019

Publication status

Published - 16/08/2019

Place of publication

Chichester

Edition

2nd

Volume

1

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Inc., Japan, Australia, United States, Canada, China, United Kingdom, Denmark

ISBN (Print)

9781119018179

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/623748
  • Scopus: 105002203710

Host publication title

A Companion to the History fo the Book

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